The Ambassador

August 16, 2010
Ólafsson’s dark, delightful tale of an alcoholic Icelandic poet representing his country at a poetry festival in Lithuania brims with mordant commentary and beguiling narrative cul-de-sacs. The book begins with one of many nods to Gogol as Sturla Jón Jónsson buys an expensive overcoat that he will promptly lose at the festival. Then the situation worsens: Sturla gets mixed up with a Salomé-inspired striptease gone wrong, is accused of plagiarizing in his latest book, gets harassed by a garlic-breath prostitute, and resorts, in a moment of desperation, to thievery. Ólafsson (The Pets) skillfully fills in Sturla’s dysfunctional family history while building up to the festival, then wastes no time in painting his protagonist into a corner once he gets there. The tension over how and whether Sturla will escape his comical problems is satisfying, as are Ólafsson’s sly observations about literary and Icelandic culture. If the eventual resolution feels too easy, there are enough discordant notes and painfully awkward situations to add depth and angst to this look into the messy calculus of life.

October 1, 2010
With the exception of Nobel laureate Halldr Laxness, modern Icelandic literature remains as remote to most Americans as the island nation known for its banking and volcanic disasters. Smiths assured translation of The Ambassador brings lafssons Icelandic novel into contemplative English. Although lafsson introduces a number of conventional plot elementsjourney, romance, and mysteryhe takes his time working through each, unconcerned with resolving any of them. Nor is lafsson burdened by making his protagonist, Sturla Jn Jnsson, a poet attending a literary festival in Lithuania, particularly likable, though the article he writes attacking literary festivals is very funny. Sturla mostly gets drunk, acts superior to the people around him, and frets over his expensive overcoat. Although the repetition grows tiresome, especially in the absence of any real narrative momentum, lafssons prose springs to life when Sturla considers his favorite subjecthis discontentin a context larger than himself: Werent fathers of numerous children all over the world fetching brooms from laundry rooms of apartments, only to return them to the same place later?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)