Sjón is an Icelandic novelist, poet, and playwright. His latest novel, Mánasteinn– drengurinn sem aldrei var til (Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was), was published in October of 2013. His novel The Blue Fox, the English translation of Skugga-Baldur, won the Nordic Council’s Literary Prize (the Nordic countries’ equivalent of the Man Booker Prize). Sjon’s poems have been translated into over twenty languages and appear in anthologies and magazines in French, German, and Macedonian. Sjon lives in Reykjavík and is currently working on the third novel of a trilogy he began in 1994.
In this conversation with Sampsonia Way, Sjón discusses what gets lost in translation between Icelandic and English, his decision to write in the third person, and his revision process.