Butterflies in November [Paperback]

* Long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 *

I can’t remember the last time I was so enchanted by a novel like I am byButterflies in November. Zany, surprising, full of twists and turns, it left me breathless. I just love this book. —Ann Hood, author ofThe Knitting CircleandThe Obituary Writer

After a day of being dumped—twice—and accidentally killing a goose, a young woman yearns for a tropical vacation far from the chaos of her life. Instead, her plans are wrecked by her best friend’s four-year-old deaf-mute son, thrust into her reluctant care. But when the boy chooses the winning numbers for a lottery ticket, the two of them set off on a road trip across Iceland with a glove compartment stuffed full of their jackpot earnings. Along the way, they encounter black sand beaches, cucumber farms, lava fields, flocks of sheep, an Estonian choir, a falconer, a hitchhiker, and both of her exes desperate for another chance. What begins as a spontaneous adventure will unexpectedly and profoundly change the way she views her past and charts her future.

Butterflies in Novemberis a blackly comic, charming, and uplifting tale of friends and lovers, motherhood, and self-discovery.

With subtle prose and sardonic humor Olafsdottir upends expectations. —Carmela Ciuraru,New York Times

Quirky and enchanting . . . a tale of resilient spirits on a journey. —Boston Globe

This picaresque novel . . . is carried by the evocation of [Iceland’s] bleak, moody beauty. —New Yorker

Anyone who’s fallen inexplicably in love with a European road-trip story will be vulnerable to this fictional journey around Iceland’s Ring Road. —New York Magazine/Vulture.com (one of 9 Books You Need to Read )

Two very unlikely travelers take a genuinely funny and gleefulÓ+