Hallgrimur Helgason |
Hallgrímur Helgason (b. 1959) is an Icelandic writer, painter, cartoonist, stand-up-comedian, columnist and an admirer of Shakespeare who has published three novels, a collection of short stories, poems and two plays. He has lived for five years in Paris and for three years in New York, where his art exhibitions have also been on display. Hallgrímur currently lives in Reykjavík and now wants “to do nothing but write and write”. His debut novel Hella (1990) is about a fourteen-year-old girl who works in a street kitchen. The principal character in his following book Petta er altt at koma (1994, “Things Are Going Great”) is also a woman, a female artist of no talent. This sarcastic book was a success in Iceland, but a real sensation blew up over his latest novel 101 Reykjavík (1996), a pitiless black comedy of the modern era. The protagonist is a young man, 33-year-old Hlynur, who has turned avoidance of work, relationships and responsibility into a genre all of its own. If Hlynur were Hamlet, his response to the question about existence would be “not to be”. This bachelor who loafs about at his mother's has deadened all sense of life in himself. He spends his time gawking all day long at satellite television and porn films. Even when he plunges into Reykjavík's swinging night life he prefers to observe the world like a film through a camera. Finally, though, reality catches up with Hlynur, too. Many women in the vicinity become pregnant and Hlynur himself falls in love with his Internet girlfriend on a trip to Paris. 101 Reykjavík was nominated for the 1999 Nordic Council Prize for Literature and a film, bearing the same name, has been made from it. The novel has been translated into Danish, Swedish and German.
Photo: Einar Falur Ingolfsson |
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