The Mark

The Icelandic Psychological Association has prepared a test - a way of measuring a person's empathy and identifying the potential for anti-social behaviour. The nation will soon have to vote on whether to make the test compulsory. Where do the rights of society end and the rights of the individual begin? Somehow, they will all have to find a way to live with the result.

''Searingly brilliant . . . [lsberg] like George Orwell and Anthony Burgess before her, lets the dystopian ironies speak for themselves.'' TLS ''Absolutely stunning.'' HERNAN DIAZ ''A masterpiece.'' KAVEH AKBAR A debut novel of urgent big ideas imbued with pacy plotting and atmospheric power, by an exciting new talent. The Icelandic Psychological Association has prepared a test. They call it a sensitivity assessment: a way of measuring a person''s empathy and identifying the potential for anti-social behaviour. In a few days'' time, Iceland will vote on whether to make the test compulsory for every citizen. The nation is bitterly divided. Some believe the test makes society safer; others decry it as a violation. As the referendum draws closer, four people - Vetur, Eyja, Tristan and Olafur - find themselves caught in the teeth of the debate. Each of them will have to reckon with uncomfortable questions: Where do the rights of society end and the rights of the individual begin? When does utopia become dystopia? No matter which side wins, they will all have to find a way to live with the result.

Autorentext
Fríða Ísberg is an Icelandic author based in Reykjavík. Her books are the poetry collections Stretch Marks and Leather Jacket Weather, the short story collection Itch and the novel The Mark, which won the Fjara Literature Prize, The Icelandic Booksellers Award, the P.O. Enquist Award. Ísberg is the 2021 recipient for The Optimist Award, awarded by the President of Iceland to one national artist. Her work has been translated into 17 languages. Currently based in Brooklyn, New York, Larissa Kyzer lived in Reykjavík for five years after receiving a Fulbright grant in 2012. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature, an MS in Library and Information Science, and an MA in Translation Studies, which she earned at the University of Iceland.

Her translations include children's books and chapter books for young readers, short stories, poetry, essays, plays, nonfiction, and novels, most notably Kristín Eiríksdóttir's Nordic Council Literature Prize-nominated A Fist or a Heart*, which was named one of Library Journal*'s 10 Best World Literature titles in 2019. Larissa was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Nadia Christensen Translation Prize for her translation of this remarkable work.

In addition to receiving grant funding and support from the European Union Prize for Literature, the Fulbright Commission, the Icelandic Ministry of Education and Culture, the Icelandic Literature Center, and Finland's Kone Foundation, Larissa was Princeton University's Fall 2019 Translator in Residence and has since taught translation workshops to undergraduate and graduate students at Princeton and New York University. She's a member of Ós, an Iceland-based international and literary collective, an at-large board member for the American Literary Translators Association, an organizer on the National Writers Union's Translator Organizing Committee, and a former co-chair of PEN America's Translation Committee. In her spare time, Larissa runs Jill!, a virtual Women+ in Translation reading series that spotlights women, trans and/or nonbinary translators and authors.

Klappentext

A debut novel of urgent big ideas imbued with pacy plotting and atmospheric power, by an exciting Icelandic literary talent.