Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (born 1958) is an Icelandic professor of art history, a novelist, playwright and poet.[1] She received the Nordic Council Literature Prize for Hotel Silence in 2018 and the Médicis Foreign Award for Miss Iceland in 2019.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was born in 1958, in Reykjavík. She studied history of art at the Sorbonne, Paris, France.[2]
Auður works as an assistant professorofart history at the University of Iceland.[3][4] For a time, she was the director of the university's Art Museum.[5]
Her first novel Upphækkuð jörð (Raised Earth) was published in 1998. It set the stage for her future works in its fine dissection of the smaller things in life.[6]
Her book Rigning í nóvember (Butterflies in November) was lauded as a "moving, layered and optimistic piece of writing".[7] The book won the Tómas Guðmundsson Literary Award.[6]
In 2009, she published Afleggjarinn (The Greenhouse) to mixed reviews. It was described as meticulous and finely crafted, yet lacking tension both in its language and friction in its emotion.[8] It was also described as a sweetly comic and wry observation of sex, manhood, death and parenthood.[9]
Auður has revealed that her temporary residence in Catholic countries and her deep interest in their art and music led her to convert to Roman Catholicism.[10]
