Ragnar Jonasson (1976, Reykjavik). With 17 years he began to translate books by Agatha Christie, today he is a writer of black novels. The shadow of fear , the first installment of his acclaimed series Iceland Black , now leaves Spain in the hands of the Seix Barral publishing house.

Tell me how does one become a translator Agatha Christie Icelandic only 17 years ... He had been reading Agatha Christie. I started with the novels I found in the library. And, when I read all that they had, I started to go to the National Library of Iceland in search of the most difficult to find. He was 13, 14 years old. And at that time there was an editor in Iceland who published a new book by Agatha Christie every Christmas. I called him every year because, being a big fan of Agatha Christie, I wanted to know what book I was going to take out and when, so he knew me. And he offered him as a translator? You are right. I was 17 and was looking for something to do during the summer holidays. And suddenly it occurred to me translate Agatha Christie. My mother took me in her car to the editor's office, because I didn't have a driving license. The editor turned out to be very kind and I asked him if he needed someone to help him with the translation of Agatha Christie's books. He told me he would think about it. A few days later he called me and told me to go ahead and choose the book he wanted. I chose the shortest one I had: Eternal Night . And it was great, I had a lot of fun. So I kept doing it. I was at the University studying Law and that was my hobby. And when did he leave it? When I started writing my own books. I didn't have time to continue doing translations. And what he learned from Agatha Christie? Many, many things. I learned to build plots and I learned that at the end of a book there must always be a surprise, and that's just what I try to do. I also learned from her the importance of the locations. In Agatha Christie's books, places are a character in themselves: either the Orient Express or a house in the middle of the field surrounded by snow. Locations for her are fundamental, and I learned that too. In 'The shadow of fear', the book that you now publish in Spain, the action takes place in Siglufjördur, a small town in the north of Iceland, without an airport and when a heavy snow falls it is isolated ... Yes, that is . The city is connected to the outside only through a tunnel and, when it snows heavily, they close it. It is something that happens frequently, every year. And why did Siglufjördur choose as a location, such an unknown and remote place? My father grew up there and my grandparents lived there. It is a place I know, whom I've been all my life. I would have six months the first time I went to Siglufjördur. Every summer went there with my parents to visit my grandparents. It is a delicious small town that has changed a lot since I started visiting it. In the 50s and 60s, when my father grew up there, it was a very prosperous city thanks to the herring, it was like Icelandic central herring fishing and had a lot of money. People moved to Siglufjördur from other parts of Iceland in search of work. And then, suddenly, the herring left, they left the waters of Icelandic jurisdiction. The economy went down and Siglufjördur became a small city with nothing. People began to leave and emigrate to other sides. And how is Siglufjördur now? Now the city is growing again thanks to tourism. A businessman who made a lot of money in Siglufjördur in the good times of herring fishing returned to the city a few years ago and began to invest a lot of money in it: ski slopes, golf courses, hotels, restaurants ... Now opened Siglufjördur is one of the most important tourist destinations in northern Iceland.

I suppose your books will also have contributed to making Siglufjördur a tourist destination ... I hope so. The truth is that there are many people who send me messages saying that he has gone to Siglufjördur for my books. In fact, a friend of mine who has a hotel there has launched a tour to visit the places of the town that appear in my novels. In his book 'The shadow of fear', written in 2009, the economic crisis of 2008 is very present ... Yes, it is. In Iceland the crisis hit very hard. In one week the three major banks went bankrupt. And our currency, the krona, weakened enormously if before the crisis for one dollar had to pay 60 crowns, in full crisis one dollar exchanged for 130 or 140 crowns. Importing goods became very expensive. For several years everyone in Iceland tried to spend little money, to save what they could. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano saved us in 2010. Do you remember him? Do you mean that volcano that threw mountains of ash into the atmosphere, forcing a good part of European airspace to close for days? That! Thanks to him Iceland became quite famous, because the volcano was news all over the world. We begin to receive lots of tourists, and we continue to receive them. Every year we have around two million visitors, a figure that is not bad for Iceland, a country with about 350,000 inhabitants. That tourist boom has saved our economy. So now Iceland is rich again. Did the crisis also hit small cities like Siglufjördur? In his novel, he argues that he hit harder in Reykjavik and the big urban centers ... In small cities like Siglufjördur, the crisis certainly had less impact, because these locations depend more on fishing than on banking businesses. And the fishing was not affected. The protagonist of his series 'Iceland Black', the policeman Ari Thór, is a very peculiar guy. He is young, he began to study Philosophy, then he went on to Theology ... It is very different from Agatha Christie's Hercules Poirot ... In his autobiography Agatha Christie said that she had always regretted that already in her first books her detectives were so older, because both Poirot and Miss Marple were already two retirees. When I wrote my first book, which is just 10 years old this month, I was starring a young man who was not a policeman, who was then studying Theology, who is looking for his missing father and who manages to solve the mystery of that disappearance. At that time I did not think that Ari Thór would become the protagonist of a series like Black Iceland . But knowing what I thought Agatha Christie Poirot's age and Miss Marple, without being aware of it, I decided that that character was young. Does Ari Thór have studied some theology, help you understand human nature? Yes I think so. Ari Thór is someone who understands others and empathizes with them. And it is also someone who grows in each book. In The Shadow of Fear , the book that now comes out in Spain, is a rather innocent, young and naive type. But in the fourth and fifth books of the series is someone with much more experience, someone who suspects more than others, darker. What happens in the Nordic countries? Why are there so many writers of thrillers? I do not know. I can tell you is that in Iceland write a lot in general. Our great cultural heritage is literature. We do not have great samples of architecture or great works of art made centuries ago as Spain has. What we have are manuscripts of the Middle Ages with Icelandic sagas. And even today we can read those manuscripts because the Icelandic has not changed much since the 10th and 11th centuries. I think that is why reading and literature are very strong in Iceland. It is said that in Iceland everyone wants to write a book. And many people do not, but I know how much astonish yes it does: write a mystery novel, a book of poetry, stories, cooking, whatever. The percentage is very high. But I insist: why this boom of black novels in the Nordic countries? Could it be perhaps because we all imagine that Iceland is a quiet place where nothing ever happens? It is very possible, you may be right. It is true that in Iceland we have few murders. There are people who kill and do terrible things, and some of these crimes are never solved, perhaps the murderers are so quiet at home, as everywhere. But it is true that people from outside the Nordic countries has a very peaceful image of us, and I think readers like to find that we are not as perfect as they thought society. I also think they like the contrast between the wonderful and peaceful landscapes we have and the scary things that can happen there. We are fascinated by the idea that monstrous things can happen anywhere, even in the quietest ... That is. Many people thought that credible black novels could not be written in Iceland because it is a very small and very quiet place, which is true. The other day in the news they gave the statistics of the last 20 years and the number of annual murders was less than two. It has taken us a while to write black novels, find readers for them and get them translated into other languages. But now that we have achieved it, there is no turning back, we have shown everyone what we can do. Want to know my theory? I think that snow and blood work very well, they create a fantastic visual effect ... In fact, his novel 'The Shadow of Fear' starts with a corpse bleeding off the snow ... Yes, it is. In Iceland there are many places that in winter are like a Christmas postcard, snow everywhere. Snow and blood effectively produce a very interesting contrast: the snow is beautiful, the blood is terrible. Beauty and horror How do you think Agatha Christie's novels have aged? Some say that not very well ... I think not. Not all have endured the same, but many of them are still good, very good. I, in fact, I'm reading them again and again, every year I go back to reread two or three, and some are so good that make me enjoy again very much. Most of Agatha Christie's books are magnificent and in fact, they are still sold worldwide, they are very popular. The books of other thriller authors from the same era as Agatha Christie are no longer found. Alistair MacLean, for example, was the famous author in the 60s and 70s, and now his books are nowhere. Agatha Christie, however, is everywhere. Next year marks 100 years since the publication of his first novel and if you go to almost any bookstore in the world you still find the books of Agatha Christie. And what is your favorite Agatha Christie novel? The murder of Roger Ackroyd . I think it's the novel with the most amazing ending ever written. It is a very intelligent novel.

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