Iceland

The Fish Can Sing, by Halldor Laxness (1966). This wistful novel centers on Alfgrimur, an orphan boy being raised by adoptive grandparents in a humble fishing cottage and who might be related to Iceland's celebrity opera singer. Laxness paints a nostalgic picture of early 20th century Iceland (in the years leading up to the nation's independence), an old-fashioned era when farmers burned peat and dung, and Reykjavik residents heated and cooked with coal and whale oil. Laxness won the 1955 Nobel Prize for literature and is Iceland's most renowned novelist.

Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World, by Charles Fergus (1998). In this memoir, Pennsylvania writer Fergus spends a summer in a farmhouse on the west coast of Iceland to deal with the grief of his mother's murder a few months before. The solitude of the house, dubbed Little Lava, on the edge of a volcanic field suits his melancholic mood, which tempers his closely observed descriptions of Iceland's long summer days, bird life, and dramatic landscape.