Narrator (Sögumaður)

On a rainy day in the middle of June, the same day that England and Costa Rica play a match in the World Cup in Brazil, a thirty-five-year-old native of Reykjavik is standing in a downtown post office.

His errand is to mail an envelope containing the manuscript for a story he has written, a story that takes place during one day in the life of a thirty-five-year-old man. But while he’s waiting in line, he notices a man that he knows. Or rather, that he knows of, as that man was, about a decade ago, the boyfriend of a girl that he himself loved from afar—a girl who, in his mind, is the only person he’s ever truly loved. And when he looks at her former boyfriend in front of him in line, all of his hatred for him comes rushing back—all the foolish feelings that he’d had at the time, when he’d even wished the man dead.

As if involuntarily, he follows the man out of the post office and doesn’t realize until he’s gone into the bookstore on the other side of the street, the bookstore where he’s followed the man, that the envelope with the manuscript, the story, is still in his hands. 171 pp

Narrator Chapters in English (pdf)