The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat

The best fiction from across the Nordic region, selected and introduced by Sjón – Iceland's internationally renowned writer

The North: home of epic storytelling, birthplace of the saga, where stories of human survival have long been sculpted by the region's natural elements, from sheltering forests to islands lashed by unforgiving seas. This exquisite anthology, selected by Sjón and Ted Hodgkinson, collects fiction from across the Nordic region in all its thrilling diversity; storytelling that is often rooted in the world of folklore and fairytale, or sometimes stark realism, and typically served up with a dark and dry wit.

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist and poet. He won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) for his novel The Blue Fox, and the novel From the Mouth of the Whale was shortlisted for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His novel Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was (2013) received every major literature prize in Iceland. Sjón's biggest work to date, the trilogy CoDex 1962, was published in its final form in autumn 2016 to great acclaim and will be published in English by Sceptre. He has published nine poetry collections, written four opera librettos and song lyrics for various artists. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer in the Dark. Sjón's novels have been published in thirty-five languages.

Ted Hodgkinson is a broadcaster, editor, critic, writer and Senior Programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at Southbank Centre, Europe's largest arts centre. Formerly online editor at Granta magazine of new writing, his essays, interviews and reviews have appeared across a range of publications and websites, including the Times Literary Supplement, the Literary Review, the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Literary Hub and the Independent. He is a former British Council literature programmer for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. He currently sits on the judging panel of the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award for the best second novel and the selection panel for the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Fellowship. He has previously judged the BBC National Short Story Award, the British Book Awards and the Costa Book Awards.