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Overview
In this beautifully crafted novel, Icelandic writer Olaf Olafsson tells the moving story of a woman who, in the remaining months of her life, undertakes an extraordinary emotional journey.For years, Disa has lived a quiet life, managing an English country-house hotel with her close companion, Anthony. Having learned she is terminally ill, Disa decides it is time to travel back to the village in Iceland where she was born. With enormous sensitivity, Olafsson carries the reader with Disa on her quietly heroic journey. As she goes north, events she has spent most of her life trying to forget are slowly revealed. Turned away by her mother, her young fiancé murdered by the Nazis, Disa was left to find refuge as a cook in a wealthy household that contained within it the seeds of both sexual and political violence. The consequences have marked her forever; only now can she attempt to find a resolution.
A rich and moving portrait of a woman by an exceptionally gifted writer.
About the Author:
Olaf Olafsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1962 and studied at Brandeis University, where he received his degree in physics. He is the author of several novels, including Absolution, which was published by Pantheon in 1994. The founder and former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Inc., Olafsson is now Vice Chairman of Time Warner Digital Media. He lives in New York City.
Synopsis
In this beautifully crafted novel, Icelandic writer Olaf Olafsson tells the moving story of a woman who, in the remaining months of her life, undertakes an extraordinary emotional journey.
For years, Disa has lived a quiet life, managing an English country-house hotel with her close companion, Anthony. Having learned she is terminally ill, Disa decides it is time to travel back to the village in Iceland where she was born. With enormous sensitivity, Olafsson carries the reader with Disa on her quietly heroic journey. As she goes north, events she has spent most of her life trying to forget are slowly revealed. Turned away by her mother, her young fiancé murdered by the Nazis, Disa was left to find refuge as a cook in a wealthy household that contained within it the seeds of both sexual and political violence. The consequences have marked her forever; only now can she attempt to find a resolution.
A rich and moving portrait of a woman by an exceptionally gifted writer.
About the Author:
Olaf Olafsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1962 and studied at Brandeis University, where he received his degree in physics. He is the author of several novels, including Absolution, which was published by Pantheon in 1994. The founder and former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Inc., Olafsson is now Vice Chairman of Time Warner Digital Media. He lives in New York City.
Publishers Weekly
The cool undercurrents of history shiver the surface of this serene fiction set in England and Iceland after WWII. Twenty years after the war, Icelandic migr Adisa ("Disa") Jonsdottir is a successful, Elizabeth Davidesque restaurateur, manager of Ditton Hall, an English stately home transformed into a hotel. She lives with Anthony, the local squire, in a common-law arrangement and has assembled a staff suited to her perfectionist, willful character. Into her impeccably choreographed life comes the sudden news that she is terminally ill; knowing she may have less than a year left to live, she sets out to visit Iceland one last time. On her travels, a series of flashbacks bring memories of her childhood in Iceland and her early culinary training in prewar London. Buried deepest in her heart is the fate of her Jewish lover, Jakob, who returns to Germany from London in 1938 to try to rescue his parents. Alone, Disa goes home to Iceland and its quasi-racist politics, where she signs on as a cook for the well-to-do Haraldssons, whose troubled adult son has recently returned from Germany under a cloud. Olafsson (Absolution) writes in a spare but moving English, though sometimes Disa describes her recipes with more richness than the characters in her lives. Perhaps too reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's butler in Remains of the Day, Disa weaves her own spell in Olafsson's accomplished novel, saving the tale from melodrama with her calm self-possession. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New WritersOlaf Olafsson has perfectly captured a woman's voice in his haunting second novel. Disa, a character eerily reminiscent of the butler in Kazua Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, is a successful, attentive restaurateur and proprietress at an English country hotel. When she learns she has but a year to live, the news serves as the catalyst for a final trip home to Iceland -- a journey she has postponed for 20 years.
For nearly two decades, Disa's life has revolved around the hotel: "the beginning of summer: bright days, open windows and white sheets flapping on the line." But when she was younger, in the 1930s, she first fled Iceland for England to avoid the "arrogant" glare of her judgmental mother and to pursue her passion for cooking -- a talent that was once an escape but has become a calling. There she meets the love of her life, Jakob, a German Jew whose fate is sealed when he returns home to rescue his parents. Brokenhearted, Disa returns home herself to work as a cook for a wealthy family, remaining estranged from her mother. In a powerfully evocative scene, she watches an injured swan try to lift itself off the water, instead crashing onto the road, mirroring her own efforts to take flight.
Traveling homeward now for the last time, Disa's mind replays the story of her life: her missteps, the causes of her emotional detachment, and the price that love has cost her. For Disa, hope has led only to self-deception, and as she straightforwardly prepares to face death, her rigorous honesty is an inspiration to behold. (Winter 2001 Selection)
Publishers Weekly -
The cool undercurrents of history shiver the surface of this serene fiction set in England and Iceland after WWII. Twenty years after the war, Icelandic migr Adisa ("Disa") Jonsdottir is a successful, Elizabeth Davidesque restaurateur, manager of Ditton Hall, an English stately home transformed into a hotel. She lives with Anthony, the local squire, in a common-law arrangement and has assembled a staff suited to her perfectionist, willful character. Into her impeccably choreographed life comes the sudden news that she is terminally ill; knowing she may have less than a year left to live, she sets out to visit Iceland one last time. On her travels, a series of flashbacks bring memories of her childhood in Iceland and her early culinary training in prewar London. Buried deepest in her heart is the fate of her Jewish lover, Jakob, who returns to Germany from London in 1938 to try to rescue his parents. Alone, Disa goes home to Iceland and its quasi-racist politics, where she signs on as a cook for the well-to-do Haraldssons, whose troubled adult son has recently returned from Germany under a cloud. Olafsson (Absolution) writes in a spare but moving English, though sometimes Disa describes her recipes with more richness than the characters in her lives. Perhaps too reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's butler in Remains of the Day, Disa weaves her own spell in Olafsson's accomplished novel, saving the tale from melodrama with her calm self-possession. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
In this well-crafted novel, Disa leads a serene life in England as the co-owner of a small hotel, where she shares a passion for cooking and nature with her partner, Anthony. When Disa is diagnosed with a fatal illness, she travels back to Iceland, revealing an unsettled past. The daughter of a doctor, she left her small village to be educated in Reykjavik. Disa soon alienated her mother by choosing a career as a chef and falling in love with Jacob, a German Jew. Disa and Jacob share a passionate, bohemian life in the English countryside until he returns to Germany to help his parents escape the Holocaust. Waiting for Jacob, Disa works in the house of an influential family and is swept into painful and startling events. Olafsson, a gifted writer (Absolution, o.p.), smoothly moves the story between past and present. Disa is not always likable but is always believable, and though the novel starts simply, it unfolds as an intricate tale of a strong and complex woman. Highly recommended.--Cathleen A. Towey, Port Washington P.L., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\Brigitte Frase
Soulful and thoughtful . . . An impressively mature and wide-ranging book, both geographically and emotionally . . . He gives his protagonist and us enough sensuous pleasures to get us through the hard stuff . . .—New York Times Book Review