Red Milk

Sjón’s policy of omission-of drama, psychology, violence, grandeur of any kind-results in a delicious tension. He tempts us to expect so much of the novel, and though he never provides the relief of clean culminations, he manages to keep the reader wanting. * Asymptote Journal *A slim forensic novel to strike a chill. * Saga *Sjón’s prose is appropriately sharp and precise, illuminating the murky corners of his topic. – Pippa Bailey * New Statesman *This is a landscape proper to a child’s imagination, dreamlike but solid, with all the pronounced lucidity and wild agency that objects and colors assume … Sjón makes us think again about what empathy can - and frequently enough simply can’t - achieve. – Erica Banks * 4Columns *Like Iceland itself, Sjón’s books are simultaneously tiny and huge, weird and normal, ancient and modern. Reading them feels like listening to that story of the beached whale: a wild invention that is actually a straight-faced confession. His books dance - with light, quick steps, never breaking eye contact - all over the line between the mythic and the mundane. – Sam Anderson * New York Times *What Sjón leaves out of his work is as powerful as what he puts in. His fiction never seems to break into a sweat, yet it takes you a long, long way. * David Mitchell *The chapters move like the prose equivalent of flip-book images, quick and evocative … Sjón’s story, based on research into a real-life band of Icelandic neo-Nazis, dovetails nicely with current preoccupations about the resurgence of fascism … By tarrying for a while with the everyday - the ultimate site of real politics - Sjón gets at how endlessly interesting it can be, and how much it can contain and conceal. – Peter C. Baker * New York Times Book Review *

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjon is the author of the novels The Blue Fox, The Whispering Muse, From the Mouth of the Whale, Moonstone and CoDex 1962, for which he has won several awards including the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and the Icelandic Literary Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and his work has been translated into thirty-five languages.

In addition, Sjon has written nine poetry collections as well as four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists. He lives in Reykjavik, Iceland.