Sjón

Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist who was born in Reykjavík in 1962. He won the Nordic Council’s Literary Prize (the equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) for his novel The Blue Fox (Bjartur, 2003) and the novel From The Mouth Of The Whale (Bjartur, 2008) was shortlisted for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His latest novel ‘Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was’ was awarded the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize and will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2016. Also a poet, playwright, librettist and lyricist, he has frequently worked with his countrywoman Björk and written a number of opera librettos. Sjón is the president of the Icelandic PEN Centre and former chairman of the board of Reykjavík, UNESCO city of Literature. His novels have been published in thirty-five languages.