Jump to content
íslenska

The Botanic Garden - Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Here, by this little pond in Reykjavik's Botanical Garden in Laugardalur, you can listen to a reading from the novel The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir.

The Greenhouse (Amazon Crossing, 2011) tells the story of Lobbi, a young man who travels through an unnamed country with three rose cuttings. His goal: to restore a dilapidated but once-renowned monastic garden to its former beauty. Following a surprise visit from home, he is left to care for his infant daughter, an unusually precocious child, who is already picking up her first Latin words. In caring for both the garden and the little girl, Lobbi slowly begins to assume the varied complex roles of a man.

You can listen to Auður Ava read the same chapter in Icelandic on the Icelandic part of this website.

Read by Darren Foreman
Translation: Brian Fitzgibbon
Recorded by Jórunn Sigurðardóttir, the Icelandic National Broadcasting