Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was

Book Talk with Icelandic author Sjón. Sjón and Sam Sacks, fiction critic for The Wall Street Journal, discuss Sjón’s latest novel, Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2016). Moonstone is a mind-bending miniature historical epic, Sjón’s specialty, but it is also the writer’s most realistic, accessible, and heartfelt work to date. It is the story of a young man on the fringes of a society that is itself at the fringes of the world—at what seems like history’s most tumultuous, perhaps ultimate moment.

“Though it is a deeply felt novel, Sjón’s prose is never histrionic or overwrought, balancing rage and hallucination…with a gentleness of spirit, an affection for precision and the small scale. The result is sure to delight his fans and convert many new ones.”—Hari Kunzru, The Guardian

Copies of Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was will be available for purchase and signing following the book talk.