Heaven and Hell

by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

“Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy.”—Eileen Battersby, TLS In a remote fishing village, a boy and his best friend spend the lonely hours on shore reading and talking about poetry. When the friend, absorbed in a borrowed copy of Paradise Lost, forgets his oilskin one morning and the crew is unexpectedly caught at sea in a savage winter storm, tragedy strikes. Overwhelmed by grief—and his crewmates’ indifference to what has happened—the boy leaves the village, determined ...