August 2023
Joachim B. Schmidt: KALMANN

Not your average Icelandic thriller: Joachim B. Schmidt’s Kalmann is a voice-driven novel that explores themes of community and change, a mystery more about people than crime, in a similar vein to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Not your average Icelandic thriller: Joachim B. Schmidt’s Kalmann is a voice-driven novel that explores themes of community and change, a mystery more about people than crime, in a similar vein to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

No matter how summer has been for you this year – scorching or wetter than expected – it probably hasn’t felt like living through an Icelandic winter. All the more reason, then, to indulge in the transporting powers of fiction and enjoy a few hours in the snowbound village of Raufarhöfn, courtesy of Joachim B. Schmidt and his novel’s eponymous narrator, Kalmann.

Kalmann, which was a runaway success in the German-speaking world and now appears in a spirited English translation by Jamie Lee Searle, bills itself purely as ‘an Icelandic mystery’ and has drawn comparisons to Fargo. With its offbeat, meandering narrative and cast of striking characters, this isn’t far wrong; it would certainly be a mistake to categorise this sparky novel as another example of straight-up Nordic noir. While there is a mystery at its heart – the disappearance of local businessman Robert McKenzie – Kalmann is far more about its narrator and the effect that a possible crime has on a community. Instead of classic Icelandic crime like Snowblind or Arnaldur Indriđason’s Erlendur series, think Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Thirty-four years old and living in a village that can properly be described as perched at the end of the world, Kalmann possesses one of the strongest narrative voices I have come across in recent books. It is this voice – at first unapologetic to the point of brashness, yet increasingly infused by a wavering uncertainty as the story progresses and its mystery unravels – that keeps the reader so engaged and makes the novel one about community rather than crime. Although our neurodivergent narrator, self-styled Sheriff of Raufarhöfn, is in many ways treated as an outsider himself, the interactions that make up day-to-day life in this isolated setting come to paint a vivid picture of the village as a community on the brink. Like Kalmann, whose closest friendship is sustained entirely online, Raufarhöfn is linked to but largely ignored by the rest of the world, and seems itself to be an outsider not just in terms of place but also time.

In this unusual location and the narrator who embodies it, the dramatic events on which the plot turns – a vanished man, polar bears, the discovery of a drug-smuggling ring – could threaten to turn Kalmann into a work of pure escapism, a mystery-driven romp through an improbable setting that has little to do with its readers’ lives. Yet Schmidt is adept at working in references to the economic, environmental and social problems facing us all: warming seas and melting ice caps, corruption in business dealings, loneliness, complex family relationships, the closure of the local school. The pain Kalmann feels at the loss of his grandfather, trapped inside his mind in a nursing home in a nearby town, is acute, as is the pride he takes in producing hákarl, an Icelandic speciality slowly losing its importance – often eschewed even by its maker, who has a penchant for burgers and sugary packaged foods. The world around Kalmann is changing, often alarmingly, often out of control. We might not have experienced these specifics, but it’s a feeling we all know.

As such, Schmidt situates Raufarhöfn resolutely in reality – and, thanks to his crystalline powers of description, places the reader firmly within this setting. Add to its vivid atmosphere and robust narrative voice a healthy dose of humour and an awful lot of heart, and Kalmann becomes an Icelandic mystery with a twist. Tough yet tender, witty and empathetic, it gives a voice to those on the outside and asks us, like all good literature, to look at the world through different eyes.

About the author

Eleanor Updegraff is a committed bookworm with a particular penchant for literature in translation. She makes her living from words in all forms: as a ghostwriter, German–English translator, copy-editor and book reviewer, and author of short stories and creative non-fiction. She grew up in the UK and has lived in Austria in 2015, where she’s often to be found in a coffee shop or running around a lake

London library: Borrow the original German title of Kalmann.

E-Library: Borrow the original German title of Kalmann digitally.

Find out more about the blog.

Book Blog Overview