Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club. Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. Discussions typically take place the last Tuesday of the month in the Halldór Laxness Library at Scandinavia House and online in our Goodreads group during the last week of the month.

This month, we’re reading “Hotel Silence” by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, winner of the Icelandic Literary Prize. Compulsive to fix things, 50-year-old Jónas Ebenezer finds himself unable to fix his own life — his divorce and discovery that he is not his daughter’s biological father has sent him into existential crisis. Armed with little more than his toolbox, he flies to an unnamed and recently war-torn country, where he books a room at the Hotel Silence. As he begins to build a community among the other hotel residents, their own deep scars enable him to see his wounds in a new light.