The latest novel from the winner of the 2021 European Union Prize for Literature.

In this unlikely coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of Iceland's unexpected steps into the age of spaceflight, teen protagonist Teddý sets out from her rural farm—spurred on by a chance encounter with an astronaut amid the lava—to try to find her place in a world built for men.

We follow her life across five decades—from the stark quiet of rural Iceland to the glossy, sticky world of 1970s air travel and the humdrum world of bank accounts and check fraud. Told in a shifting, prismatic structure, Boudoir introduces readers to an exciting new heroine who refuses to let things be the way they are just because they are the way they are.

With piercing clarity and dry, unsentimental wit, Pálsdóttir—historian, novelist, and one of Iceland’s most compelling contemporary voices—captures the dissonance between how we are seen and who we are. Boudoir is a novel about reinvention, dislocation, and the forceful gravity of the lives we try to leave behind.