Names for the Sea

One of the most enjoyable travel books I've read -- Helen Rumbelow * The Times * Beautifully written ... Moss grapples with new foods, customs and landscapes that are both oddly familiar and wildly alien in this absorbing memoir -- Carl Wilkinson * Financial Times * A fascinating and unusual book, a genuine news from nowhere, the gripping account of one person thinking and perceiving for herself -- Joanna Kavenna * Literary Review * Moss is a wry and a very good companion... and her book is as perceptive of the southern English middle-classes, as it is of Icelanders -- Kathleen Jamie * Guardian * A wry, intimate and beautifully-observed portrait of a culture both alien and familiar. Sarah Moss's account of her Icelandic sojourn is a vicarious treat -- Philip Marsden Holds an uncompromising mirror up to the British life that she has left behind. Honest, funny, frank, and insightful, it is a reassuring guide to the strangeness of being a stranger. An enviable experience beautifully described -- Gavin Francis [Moss] sheds light on the strangeness of the country for an outsider as well as on the Icelanders' ongoing trauma... Absorbing -- Emily Read * Spectator * A thoughtful and moving description of a country -- Giles Foden * Conde Nast Traveller * It is Moss's inquisitive excursions into the real and imagined Icelandic landscapes that enthral the most... engaging [and] expressive -- Rob St John * List * This tale perfectly evokes the country's natural splendours, but it's the colourful cast of friends and hangers-on that is so touching * National Geographic Traveller * Moss writes honestly... She mocks her won cultural assumptions drily -- Nancy Campbell * Times Literary Supplement * This delightful and appealing book is written in a crisp and insightful style... filled with descriptions of the northern landscape which capture it perfectly... Very funny * We Love This Book * Fantastic and perceptive... Moss is so subtle and skilled at what she does, as careful and precise a prose specialist as you will find, that it hangs together seamlessly and brilliantly * Big Issue * An insightful account of a year in a beguiling but often incomprehensible land of fire and ice... this is a delightful tale with a strong sense of place -- Duncan Mills * Traveller * Her wit, like her sensitivity to social matters, is complemented by her astoundingly alert writing about the natural world -- Kevin Canfield * Star Tribune * Always illuminating * Washington Post * Beautiful * Travelers Today * A wry memoir about a family who move to Iceland for a year in the aftermath of the financial crash. Moss discovers as much about herself as she does the Icelanders she writes about. -- Destination books this summer * Elle * A wonderful, meditative and informative introduction to a country that's both progressive and steeped in more myths, legends and sagas than any other... All Icelandic life is here * New European *

SARAH MOSS was educated at Oxford University and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. She is the author of two novels; Cold Earth, and Night Waking, which was selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, and the co-author of Chocolate: A Global History. She spent 2009-10 as a visiting lecturer at the University of Reykjavik.