ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON - Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker - On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok

Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water.

"So I have written plays, short stories, science fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and directed documentary films, including Not Ok. So professors from Rice University Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe are anthropologists doing research on climate change. And they noticed that Iceland had lost its first glacier to climate change. And just like we have monuments to major events like war monuments and anti-slavery monuments, humans have all sorts of monuments in history.

And they were thinking, the first glacier to be gone, doesn't that deserve a monument? So they planned this event where we would place a monument in memory of the first glacier Iceland lost to climate change and asked me to write the text for that plaque. And it was a strange request because for the person to be a writer, to be living during a time when a glacier has gone during a lifetime, what kind of an obituary or what kind of message do we write? Because I was thinking, Okay, I'm writing this in copper, so I'm writing to the people around me here and now, but just like in a graveyard, somebody might come after 200, 300, 500, 600 years and read these words.

So simultaneously addressing my peers, my fellow earthlings here and now, and then talking to people that might stumble upon that glacier in the near or distant future. So I wrote: 

A letter to the future

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.

In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

This monument is to acknowledge that we know

what is happening and what needs to be done.

Only you know if we did it."

www.andrimagnason.com

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