"Stefansson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy."–Eileen Battersby, TLS In a remote part of Iceland, a young man joins a cod-fishing crew, but when a tragedy occurs at sea, he’s appalled by his fellow fishermen’s cruel indifference. Lost, broken by his experiences, he leaves the settlement in secret, his only purpose to return a book to a blind old sea captain who lives in a town beyond the mountains–and when he arrives, he finds that he isn’t alone in his solitude: welcomed into a warm circle of outcasts, he begins to see the world anew. Heaven and Hell navigates the depths of despair to celebrate the redemptive power of friendship. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, it is a reading experience as intense as the forces of the Icelandic landscape themselves.
