The Blue Planet by Andri Snær Magnason will be one of three books to be read in the Nordic Library week, 8th – 14th of November 2010, taking place in more than 2000 libraries in all the nordic and many of the Baltic countries. The theme of the Nordic Library week this year is – “The magical north”. The other books in focus this week are from the Edda, and stories by John Lindqvist and Lene Kaaberbøl. The Blue Planet has been published in more than 20 countries and staged in 6 countries.  In the Göteborg Bookfair Andri will attend a seminar the 25th of September. More information in many languages can be found here.

February 28. 2010. Andri Snær Magnason’s Acceptance speech – at the Kairos Award Ceremony of the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S in Hamburg. 

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, my Dear Friends, Colleagues and my Dear Family og hæ – krakkar!

I would like to thank Mr. Christoph Stolzl and Mr. Halldór Guðmundsson for their kind words and all of you for this great honour.

I you ask an Icelandic child about Hamburg the first thing that will come to it’s mind is the word game that is often played when travelling in a car: “What are you doing with the money the lady from Hamburg gave to you?”. You must answer but you may not say “yes”, “no”, “black” or “white”. So you say: I bought a car. Was it red? Indeed – it was read? Not blue ?- No… Then you are out.  So it was funny when I told my children we would actually meet the lady from Hamburg. But we had to use the money on something very special – something between yes and no, black and white. Maybe that is the real space where art lives.

But why did I take this path in life? If you ask my psychologist he would say that it is because I have two mothers – they are identical twins – that creates a very good ground for a strange mind and some complexes – a douple öedipus to deal with for example. Despite sharing the same genes and upbringing – they have opposite veiws on everything. That I might have from my mothers, the ability to see things from two correct perspectives and never quite agree with myself. 

If you would ask my brother he would blame it on Lego – I hoped I would never grow up from Lego. But later I found out that Lego is quite like language – you have prefabricated parts but can build a whole world from them. But the cool thing is that language is bigger, more bricks – and endless colors. Even an old language spoken by very few people – like Icelandic, can be used to create almost anything. And then it can be translated to German or Chinese.

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LoveStar – a novel by Andri Snær Magnason has been published by Lubbe in Germany. Here you can see the cover, “retro-sci-fi-flash gordon soft porn style”. It actually fits the book quite well. LoveStar is about a huge corporation based on a north atlantic island and becomes a global giant. You could say that LoveStar is about what would have happened to the world if the crisis had not stopped our global expansion. Here you can read some excerpts in German on the Lubbe website. LoveStar did very well when it was published here in Iceland, it was nominated to the Icelandic literary award and it won the DV literary prize. Now it has been staged by Herranott – the oldest theater group in Iceland. What is LoveStar? When I wrote the book I thought of the books I had loved the most, by Bulgakof, Calvino, Primo Levi, Vonnegut and others, not quite science fiction – but on the edge, twisted reality. 

Andri will participate in the Leipziger Buchmesse 2010 from the 18th – the 21st of march. Andri Snær Magnason just won the Kairos award of the Alfred Toepfer institute in Hamburg. Here is some information in German about Lovestar.

My childrens book – Die Geshichte auf dem blauen planeten – has also been published in German. It won the Icelandic literary prize in the year 2000 and has been published in 20 languages. Here you can read about in on Radio Bremen.

The Story of the Blue Planet by Andri Snær Magnason and illustrations by Aslaug Jonsdottir has been published in China by Beijing Science and Technology Press – Beijing.

Dreamland will be published this year in Japan by NHK and in Denmark by Tiderne Skifter. The Blue Planet will be published in China in the next days and it has just been published in Lithauenia by Sara. Next year Lubbe publishers in Germany will publish LoveStar and they have proposed a marketing slogan: ,,Imagine in Icelanders ruled the world”. In short the book is about an Icelandic corporation that expands so greatly that it causes the end of the world. It came out first in Iceland quite before the crash, even before anyone here had a private jet and quite a lot has unfolded since making it very interesting to see how the german readers will find it. Here is a small chapter from the book in a New York book blog. Dreamland the movie will participate in Nordisk Panorama here in Reykjavik, it will have it’s international premier in november in Amsterdam and in january it will be in the Göthenburg film festival. In Reykjavik you can see the film in September at Nordisk Panorama. Andri Snær Magnason is now attending Kapitell in Stavanger, 17th and 18th of september with Sjon and Hallgrimur Helgason. Oct 2-5 he will be in Festival Internationale in Italy.

The Blue Planet by Andri Snær Magnason has just been published in Vilnius. Here is the information in the Lithuanian:

Apysaka / Iš islandų kalbos vertė Jurgita Marija Abraitytė; dailininkė Áslaug Jónsdóttir. – Vilnius: Žara, 2009 . – 94 p.

Mėlynoji planeta buvo labai ypatinga: joje gyveno tik vaikai. Žinoma, ten dar buvo žvėrelių ir augalų, bet visur, kur tik pažvelgsi, bėgiojo tik įvairiausio dydžio ir formų vaikai: ir maži, ir dideli, ir stori, ir ploni, o kai kurie netgi tokie keisti, kaip ir tas keistuolis, kurį pamatai pasižiūrėjęs į veidrodį. 

Kadangi planetoje nebuvo nė vieno suaugusiojo, vaikai buvo visiškai laisvi. Niekas jiems nenurodinėjo, ką jie turi daryti. Joje dėjosi tokia nesuskaičiuojama gausybė keistenybių ir nuotykių, kad joks suaugęs žmogus nebūtų galėjęs joje gyventi nežildamas ir nedžiūdamas iš streso ir rūpesčių.

Andri Snær Magnason, Sjón and Auður Jónsdóttir are represented in Bokprogrammet, NRK1 Norway February 10th. Dreamland is not yet published in Norway but the Blue Planet was recently released as an audiobook by Karviland. 

NRK1 tirsdag 10. februar kl 22.30 Bokprogrammet: Litterær gulltid på Island

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The Blue Planet by Andri Snær Magnason will be premiered in Vaasa City Theater April 18 2009. This will be the second production in Finland – before it has been performed in Lahti. The Blue Planet was originally performed in the National Theater of Iceland. In Toronto the production was nominated for 5 Dora Awards. The book has been published in Finland and published by Pieni Karhu. Here is more information about the play in Finnish and here is lots of information in Finnish about Andri Snær Magnason and his book – The Story of The Blue Planet.

The Story of the Blue Planet has been published in German. The book won the Icelandic literary award and has now been published in almost 20 countries.

Here is more in German from my publisher:

Auf einem blauen Planeten draußen weit im Weltall leben nur Kinder, dort gibt es keine Erwachsenen. Es sind wilde Kinder, die spielen, wenn sie es wollen und die schlafen, wenn ihnen danach ist. Es gibt niemanden, der ihnen sagt, was sie tun und lassen sollen.

Eines Tages landet ein mysteriöser Mann mit seinem Raumschiff auf dem Planeten. Er lehrt die Kinder im Sonnenschein zu fliegen…

Doch dafür zahlen sie einen hohen Preis.

Die Freundschaft und der Einfallsreichtum von Brimir und Hulda werden in äußerst gefährlichen Abenteuern auf die Probe gestellt.

More here:

”Historia om den blå planeten”

– prisbelønnet barnebok endelig på norsk!

Leses av Heidi Gjermundsen Broch

På en blå planet langt ute i verdensrommet lever det kun barn. De kan selv bestemme når de vil leke og når de vil legge seg. En dag lander det en mystisk mann. Han kommer med en rekke uimotståelige tilbud til barna, som skal gjøre livene deres mye enklere og lykkeligere. Blant annet spikrer han fast solen så det alltid er lyst og lærer dem å fly ved å børste støvet av sommerfuglenes vinger. Og alt han krever til gjengjeld er en bitteliten del av ungdomsfølelsen i barnas hjerter. Read the rest of this entry »