Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir won the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2018 yesterday, an annual prize awarded to a work of fiction written in one of the Nordic languages. Past winners include Per Petterson and Sofi Oksanen. We loved her little book Butterflies in November. Try it for something a bit different.

Perhaps Icelandic women are more forward thinking than the rest of us… or maybe they just aren’t?! Butterflies in November by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir has droll re-evaluations of what it means to be a woman, and an independent woman at that, in this quirky narrative of a road trip ‘into the wilderness’ after being simultaneously dumped by both lover and husband. Local insight: the irony being that there is only one road in Iceland, and it loops back on itself. Brilliant circular little adventure, full of the unnamed heroine’s sardonic wit and incongruous, but very human, weaknesses. The lack of moralising makes it a refreshing, light, read.

Review by Michele