Moonstone (9 page)
Authors: Sjón
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Special thanks are due to A. S. Byatt and Neel Mukherjee for their inspiration and support.
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ALSO BY
SJÃN
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Born in Reykjavik in 1962,
Sjón
is a celebrated Icelandic novelist. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) for his novel
The Blue Fox
, and his novel
From the Mouth of the Whale
was short-listed for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Also a poet, librettist, and lyricist, he has published nine poetry collections and written four opera librettos, as well as lyrics for various artists. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics for the film
Dancer in the Dark.
Sjón's novels have been published in thirty-five languages. You can sign up for email updates
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CONTENTS
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Epigraph: Translation of Robert Desnos's poem “à la mystérieuse” (“To the One of Mystery”), 1926, by Bill Zavatsky.
Billy
by Anonymous, quoted
here
, is taken from the ninth reprint of
Poems of the Great War
, published by the Macmillan Company, 1916.
Images
here
are stills from Episode 6 of
Les Vampires
, a film by Louis Feuillade, Production Gaumont, 1915.
Extract
here
, translation of an article published in
Morgunbladid
, November 17, 1918.
Photograph
here
of Robert Herring, Kenneth Macpherson, and Bryher, taken on their 1929 trip. Photographer unknown.
Photograph
here
of Steinólfur Sævar GÃslason Geirdal, detail of a larger picture published in
Thjódviljinn
, March 11, 1987. Photograph by Einar Ãlason.
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
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Copyright © 2013 by Sjón
Translation copyright © 2016 by Victoria Cribb
All rights reserved
Originally published in Icelandic in 2013 by JPV Publishing, Iceland, as
Mánasteinn: Drengurinn sem aldrei var til
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2016
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Owing to limitations of space, permissions acknowledgments appear at the back of the book.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sjón, 1962â author.|Cribb, Victoria, translator.
Title: Moonstone: the boy who never was / Sjón; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb.
Other titles: Mánasteinn: drengurinn sem aldrei var til. English
Description: First American edition.|New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015037595|ISBN 9780374212438 (hardcover)|ISBN 9780374712877 (e-book)
Classification: LCC PT7511.S62 M3613 2016|DDC 839/.6935âdc23
LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037595
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