Dottir Press Publishes 'Quake' by Meg Matich '15
Dottir Press recently published Quake: A Novel by Meg Matich '15 with a book talk to follow on March 1, 2022. Quake is an award-winning novel by Auður Jonsdottir translated from the Icelandic by Matich. Quake is now available for purchase.
Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Quake follows the story of Saga, a woman who awakes after an epileptic seizure on a sidewalk along busy Miklabraut Street. Her three-year-old son has disappeared and the last thing Saga can remember is a double-decker bus that no one remembers seeing. Beset by her doubts about what occurred, Saga tries to make sense of her fragmented emotions and memories as she decides who to trust. "Quake is a shocking and revelatory exploration of the blurred lines between fact and fiction, reality and imagination, and where mother ends and child begins," the publisher states.
According to Publishers Weekly, Quake is a "powerful story of memory, identity, and the legacy of violence…The limited perspective and acute sense of the narrator’s pain, both ingeniously rendered, make this unforgettable.”
Author Karen Havelin states in a review, "This stunningly vivid novel brings its reader right into the body of a woman as she tries to make sense of her life and family after illness impacts her memories…This is a terrifyingly well written novel about the shock of not being able to trust the body you are trapped in. It portrays life reduced to its bare bones and how we live on to find hope and unexpected allies."
Quake is the English-language debut of Icelandic author Auður Jónsdóttir. The film adaptation of the novel was directed by Tinna Hrafnsdóttir and premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.
A book talk for Quake will be held at the Scandinavia House on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 7:30pm EST. The event will feature translator Meg Matich, author Auður Jónsdóttir, director Tinna Hrafnsdóttir, and moderator Esther Allen in conversation. The book talk is free and open to the public and will also be live-streamed virtually. Registration for the event is now available online.
Meg Matich is a poet and translator in Reykjavik. She has received support for her work from the Banff Centre, PEN America, and the Fulbright Commission, and she is a frequent collaborator with Reykjavik UNESCO. Among other projects, Matich has collaborated with poet Magnús Sigurðsson on an anthology of Icelandic poetry, translated a book of essays in honor of former President Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, and translated the novel Magma (Grove Atlantic, 2021). Matich is one of a few immigrants in the Icelandic Writers’ Union and considers that membership quintessential to her life in Iceland.