It is three weeks since the boy came to town, carrying a book of poetry to return to the old sea captain-the poetry Bárour died for. Three weeks, but already Bárour's ghost has faded. Snow falls so heavily that it binds heaven and earth together.

As the villagers gather in the inn to drink schnapps and coffee while the boy reads to them from Hamlet, Jens the postman stumbles in half-dead, having almost frozen to his horse. On his next journey to the fjords Jens is accompanied by the boy, and both must risk their lives for each other, and for an unusual item of mail.

The Sorrow of Angels is a timeless and powerful story that evokes the struggle of man against the ferocious majesty of nature. Asked by The Independent what inspired him to write these three novels, Stefánsson named his first visit to the landscape of Iceland's West Fjords. "It was like a punch in the solar plexus . . . The mountains seemed to be saying, 'Why aren't you writing about us?"