Media Hits: YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS, BURN MAN!
IN THE NEWS!
Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024) received an outstanding review from Daniel Mason in the New York Times. The review was published online on March 3, 2024 and in print on March 10, 2024. You can read the full review here.
Mason writes:
“Comparisons do not do justice to the complexity of Stefánsson’s book, nor the uniqueness of his prose, rendered here in a tumblingly beautiful translation by Philip Roughton.”
Your Absence Is Darkness has also been reviewed in Asymptote, Under the Radar Magazine, and Winnipeg Free Press. The reviews were all published on March 11, 2024. It was also listed on Lit Hub, which highlighted the New York Times review, online on March 8, 2024.
In Asymptote, Kathryn Raver writes:
“A tale about life, death, and what we do with the time we are given in between the two . . . Stefánsson seeks to evoke is that the big picture isn’t for us to know, but something that is created, unknowingly, over the course of centuries.”
In Under the Radar, Frank Valish writes:
“Your Absence Is Darkness will be one of the best books you read this year . . . [it] expounds on themes of life, death, love, loneliness, mistakes, and the search for meaning. The eternal themes. Those which the great novels elucidate carefully but spectacularly in unmatched prose. Which is exactly the kind of novel this is.”
In the Winnipeg Free Press, David Jón Fuller writes:
“The award-winning Icelandic author interweaves multigenerational stories often set in the country’s north and west . . . Stefánsson’s prose puts us right in the characters’ thoughts, feelings and sensations.”
Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!
Burn Man by Mark Anthony Jarman (Nov 21, 2023) was reviewed in Literary Review of Canada. The review was published on March 8, 2024. You can read the full review here.
Ruth Panofsky writes:
“This is a writer who possesses stylistic mastery and an ability to evoke character and incident using the barest of details. His are inimitable protagonists—wounded and nameless men with a gift for irony and humour—who inhabit haunting worlds.”
Burn Man was also reviewed in the Globe and Mail. The review was published on March 13, 2024, and can be read here.
Emily M. Keeler writes:
“Jarman’s stories on the whole feel less Catholic in the Roman sense and more Catholic in the Greek sense: his attentions are rangey, all-embracing, vitalized by the splendour both in ugly mundane violence and the febrile pulsations of longing, of something a bit like love.”
Get Burn Man here!
