I Come in Silence by Hannah Krause-Bendix

Westfjords thanks to Getty via Condé Nast Traveller

Title: I Come in Silence 

Author: Hannah Krause-Bendix

Publisher: not known 

Source book: Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

Hannah Krause-Bendix is trying to write her fifth novel. She has been twice nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize (which is real), and has never had a bad review but… nobody reads her books. 

Yes, I can think of books like that. I have read several award winning/nominated books. Mostly by mistake. People will give them as presents. I probably didn’t realise they had won a major literary prize before I began reading. And… I almost always haven’t enjoyed them. Except for The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell which I read and much enjoyed when I was going through my phase of reading loads of books about the British in India. That won the Booker Prize in 1973.

An intern working for her publisher at a book fair tells Hannah that the author of I Come in Silence has won the Nordic Council Literature Prize twice (she hasn’t), and that I Come in Silence is epic, a bit weird and super deep. That might be a lucky guess, but it’s plain that she has never read any of Hannah’s books and doesn’t have a clue who she is talking to. That might make an author grumpy.

I have to confess that I couldn’t finish reading Thirty Days of Darkness. Mostly because I disliked the main character so much. However, with any luck a total stranger excitedly snapped it up from my local charity shop.

Landmannalaugar thanks to Getty via Condé Nast Traveller