In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrived at Keflavík Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. Hours passed as she waited for her contact to pick her up but no one arrived. Instead, she caught the last bus to Reykjavík, where a man in a dressing gown was waiting for her at the depot.
That night she slept off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, completely unaware that, years later, she would return to the same building to write Burial Rites, a retelling of Iceland's last execution, and an offering to the country that would utterly change her life's trajectory.
Written with rich detail and humorous and poignant anecdote, Always Home, Always Homesick is a love letter from a writer to her muse. At once a memoir of her experiences of living in Iceland, and a wider consideration of the centrality of literature to the nation's culture and identity, it explores how Iceland has shaped the person she is today, alongside how this tiny nation continues to be a powerhouse of creative expression.
Moving back and forth across two decades, between her year living in the small, northern fishing village of Sauðárkrókur, to researching and writing Burial Rites, to delivering the opening night address of the 2023 Reykjavík International Literary Festival, Always Home contemplates the global influence of the sagas, the importance of storytelling amongst impoverished 18th and 19th century Icelanders, and Iceland's rich folk history and supernatural traditions.
