Jon Kalman Stefánsson and Robert Alan Jamieson @ EIBF

 

A pairing of two authors from northerly places (certainly north of Edinburgh) seems like a good idea, and both Robert Alan Jamieson, from Shetland, and Jon Kalman Stefánsson, from Iceland, have written novels depicting life in small communities. That’s about where the similarities end, but that’s not a bad thing. Robert Alan Jamieson read a section from his Da Happie Land, which is a good book, but the passage he read was a mistake – it went on for longer than ten minutes, which is a large percentage of any event that only lasts an hour. After the event, one attendee referred to it as ‘a bit of an ordeal’. Jon Kalman Stefánsson, by contrast, read a short section of his work in the original Icelandic, which worked superbly – most of the audience weren’t Icelandic speakers, but the rhythm of the language came over astonishingly well. The chair then read a longer passage in its English translation, allowing the audience to contrast the two. The original seemed far richer, but then this may be the result of its being read by its author, more than any translation problem. The readings, sadly, didn’t encourage many people to come forward during the question and answer session at the end, so this event ended rather disappointingly. [Keir Hind]