Ottar Nordfjord started his writing career as a poet, before moving on to novels and screenplays. His first poetry collection, In Reykjavik, was published 2002 and since then he has published four more – Barbeque Weather in October (2004), Circus (2005), Happiness and Gloom (2005), and A-Z (2006). He often uses imagery in his poems, like drawings or collages. Ottar’s interest in drawing also led to the publication of two political comics, Jón Ásgeir and the Birthday Party (2007) and Ten Little Banker-boys (2008). And in 2009, he published a 264-page collage biography, The Architect with the Beret: The Life of Sverrir Norðfjörð, about his late father which a critic called “an amazing piece of collage art work”.
To date, Ottar has published 10 novels. His latest one, City of Lava (2020), is about a quiet literature critic that gets new information about the death of his best friend 25 years earlier that turns his life upside down. It’s currently being adapted into a feature by production companies Falcon Features in Canada and Saga Film in Iceland. Ottar’s novel Brave Men’s Blood (2013), which is about the three intertwining lives of an internal affairs agent, a criminal kingpin and an undercover cop, was partly used as the story of the 2014 film City State 2: Brave Men’s Blood . Ottar’s short novel Una (2012) is about the alleged death of a boy and his mother’s search for him when she receives a series of mysterious clues. Director Marteinn Thorsson is adapting it into a feature. And Ottar is currently adapting his novel Paradise City (2009) – about a man who finds a strange substance that changes everyone’s life – into a TV series. Ottar’s other novels, like Abraham’s Knife (2007), Sun Cross (2008), and The Liar (2011), all became bestsellers in Iceland and have been published in over 20 countries. The E-version of Sun Cross became an Amazon bestseller in France in 2013.
- Main publisher: Forlagid, forlagid.is
- Braedraborgarstígur 7,
- 101 Reykjavik, Iceland
