Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland

Sarah Moss

'One of the most enjoyable travel books I've read' The Times

Acclaimed novelist Sarah Moss's compelling account of living in Iceland with two small children in the year the volcano erupted

At the height of the financial crisis in 2009, Sarah Moss and her husband moved with their two small children to Iceland. From their makeshift home among the half-finished skyscrapers of Reykjavik, Moss travels to hillsides of boiling mud and volcanic craters, and the remote farms and fishing villages of the far north. She watches the northern lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds, and as the weeks and months go by, she and her family find new ways to live.

By turns meditative and wickedly observant, Sarah Moss's account of her time in Iceland is the adventure of a lifetime with the baggage of a lifetime too.

'Moss is a wry and a very good companion...and her book is as perceptive of the southern English middle-classes, as it is of Icelanders' Kathleen Jamie, Guardian

'A wry, intimate and beautifully-observed portrait of a culture both alien and familiar. Sarah Moss's account of her Icelandic sojourn is a vicarious treat' Philip Marsden