Mapped
101 Reykjavík
Hallgrímur Helgason
Hlynur Björn, a thirtyish layabout who still lives with his mother, drifts through the bars, screens and hangovers of downtown Reykjavík, his aimless world upended when his mother's lover moves in. Helgason maps the real 101 postal district that gives the book its name: the flat in the old centre, the shopping and bar street of Laugavegur, the downtown pubs of the weekend rúntur, and the little lake of Tjörnin at the city's heart.
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Independent People
Halldór Laxness
A sheep farmer's war of attrition with the land itself, set on a haunted croft on the open moor. The farm is invented, so the map anchors it in the countryside Laxness knew as a boy, the Mosfellsdalur valley and the Mosfellsheiði heath east of Reykjavík, and runs out to the capital and the coastal market town that pull his family away from the moor.
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