An entrancing adventure for today’s troubled planet, The Casket of Time is a fantastical tale of time travel and environmental calamity from celebrated Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason.
Teenage Sigrun is sick of all the apocalyptic news about the “situation” and, worse, her parents’ obsession with it. Sigrun’s family—along with everyone else—decides to hibernate in their TimeBoxes®, hoping for someone else to fix the world’s problems . But when Sigrun’s TimeBox® opens too early, she discovers an abandoned city overrun by wilderness and joins a band of kids who are helping a researcher named Grace solve the “situation.”
The world, according to Grace, is under an ancient curse. There once was a princess named Obsidiana, who was trapped in time by the greedy king of Pangea. To protect Obsidiana from dark and gloomy days, the king put her in a crystal casket made of spider silk woven so tightly that time itself couldn’t penetrate. The king’s greed for power doomed his kingdom and the trapped princess. Sigrun sees eerie parallels between the tale of Obsidiana and the present-day crisis, and realizes it’s up to her and her friends to break the ancient curse and fix the world.
Works in English include three crime novels (House of Evidence, Daybreak, and Sun on Fire) by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson for Amazon Crossing, and And the Wind Sees All by Guðmundur Andri Thorsson, published by Peirene Press in September 2018.
Winner of The Icelandic Literary Prize for Children and Young
People’s Books Winner of The Icelandic Booksellers Prize for Best Teenage Book of the Year Nominated for the Nordic Council
Children and Young People’s Literature Prize Winner of the The West Nordic Literature Prize
Winner of the Reykjavik Children’s Literature Prize
“The story confronts the concept of time and twists old fairy-tale memories with a passionate creativity.”
—The Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize Citation
“Andri Snær Magnason has created an intimate epic that floats effortlessly between genres as diverse as fairy tale and political commentary, science fiction and social realism. The Casket of Time spans the chasm between ‘once upon a time’ and ‘have you heard the news today’ in a way that makes his philosophical fable feel both timely and timeless.”
—Bjarke Ingels
“The largest box of chocolate written in the Icelandic language that I have ever laid my hands on... This is confectionery for the mind!... This is a book for the 3 year old, the 30 year old, the 300 year old.”
—Audur Haraldsdóttir, Channel 2, National Radio (Iceland)
“The power of story animates a tale that communicates—but is not overpowered by—urgent messages.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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