Quentin Bates escaped English suburbia as a teenager, jumping at the chance of a gap year working in Iceland. For a variety of reasons, the gap year stretched to a gap decade, during which time he went native in the north of Iceland, acquiring a new language, a new profession as a seaman, and a family, before decamping en masse to England. He worked as a truck driver, teacher, netmaker and trawlerman at various times before falling into journalism, largely by accident. He is the author of a series of crime novels set in present-day Iceland (Frozen Out, Cold Steal, Chilled to the Bone, Winterlude, Cold Comfort and Thin Ice) which have been published worldwide. He has translated all of Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series. Visit him on Twitter @graskeggur or on his website: graskeggur.com

Copyright

First published in Icelandic as Búrið by Forlagid in 2017
First published in English by Orenda Books in 2019
Copyright © Lilja Sigurðardóttir, 2017
English translation copyright © Quentin Bates, 2019

Lilja Sigurðardóttir has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978–1–912374–49–6
eISBN 978–1–912374–50–2

The publication of this translation has been made possible through the financial support of