The first readers of LoveStar in Germany are finishing the book these days. Here is a nice quote from Style Magazine in Switzerland:

“Die Geschichte, die in der nahen Zukunft spielt, laviert irgendwo zwischen George Orwells “1984″, Monty Pythons Flying Circus, Douglas Adams’ “Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis” und Herzschmerzkitsch à la Nicholas Sparks. Autor Andri Snaer Magnason beweist mit LoveStar (Verlag Lübbe), dass die Nordländer nicht nur das blutige, düstere Krimi-Genre draufhaben, sondern auch das Heiter-Absurde.” – auf Anita Lehmeier. 

LoveStar has been published in German by Lubbe. Andri Snær Magnason is participating in the Leipziger Buchmesse from the 18th – 21st of March.

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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.

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 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.

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