The surreal landscapes of Iceland come alive in this surprising tale of painting and solitude. Nordic literature at its best.
A man lives and paints in his caravans near the Sandá, a glacial river on the edge of Iceland. Summer ends, the paintings pile up in the studio, visits are rare and the nights get colder and colder and quieter. With Chagall’s biography or Van Gogh’s letters in mind, the artist wanders through the forest, forgetting himself in the course of time, interrupted by the unreal apparitions of the woman in the red raincoat. Only one thing matters to him: to paint the truth of the trees that surround him. In a language dressed in landscapes, sensitive to the secret tensions of silence, The Book of Sandá River follows the itinerary of a reflection that chooses to say goodbye, leaving behind “years of sand, bare and windswept, like a desert dried out by a winter without rain”.
