For Máni Steinn, the question is whether, at Reykjavik's darkest hour, he should retreat all the way into this imaginary world, or if he should engage with the society that has so soundly rejected him. And yet the outside world has also brought Icelanders cinema! And there's nothing like a dark, silent room with a film from Europe flickering on the screen to help you escape from the overwhelming threats-and adventures-of the night, to transport you, to make you feel like everything is going to be all right. And if the flu doesn't do it, there's always the threat that war will spread all the way north. David Mitchell Sjn’s Moonstone is a marvel of a novel, queer in every sense of the wordan impeccable little gem. Vibrant and visceral, briskly paced but meditative, unsettling yet droll and flecked with beauty, it is a pitch-perfect study of transgression, survival, and love. His city, Reykjavik in 1918, is homogeneous and isolated and seems entirely defenseless against the Spanish flu, which has already torn through Europe, Asia, and North America and is now lapping up on Iceland's shores. Moonstone is Sjn’s slim, simmering masterpiece. Máni Steinn is queer in a society in which the idea of homosexuality is beyond the furthest extreme. 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. But it is also Sjón's most realistic, accessible, and heartfelt work yet. The mind-bending miniature historical epic is Sjón's specialty, and Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was is no exception.
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