Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2014

Executing History Perfectly- Agnes Magnúsdóttir and her "Burial Rites"

Courtesy of goodreads.com Today, Iceland is a prime example of a country absolutely thriving in the modern, changing world.  It is at the top of the game in education, technology, human rights, and regularly tops the stats lists for one of the best and safest places to live in the world.  Yet, 200 years ago, Iceland was a desolate, harsh country, mostly empty space, with a smattering of extremely close-knit, interwoven communities, which feared strangers and change.  This setting, chilly in both the physical landscape and the social one, is where author Hannah Kent sets her novel, Burial Rites .   Burial Rites  focuses on the last person executed in Iceland, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, in 1830.  A brilliant combination of historical fact and fiction, Burial Rites  is a lyrical, somber, yet beautiful novel about love, betrayal, and the ability to overcome first judgments. Agnes Magnúsdóttir and two others are accused of the brutal murder of their emp...