Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness's Under the
Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly
provocative novel at once earthy and
otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of
Iceland dispatches a young emissary to
investigate certain charges against the pastor
at Snæfells Glacier, who, among other things,
appears to have given up burying the dead. But
once he arrives, the emissary finds that this
dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity
in a community that regards itself as the center
of the world and where Creation itself is a work
in progress. What is the emissary to make, for
example, of the boarded-up church? What about
the mysterious building that has sprung up
alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus
spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that
his wife, Ua, is rumored never to have bathed,
eaten, or slept? Under the Glacier overflows
with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures
a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.