Red Milk

WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY''S NORDIC PRIZE 2023

A timely and provocative novel from the internationally celebrated novelist Sjón, about a mysterious Icelandic neo-Nazi and the enduring global allure of fascism.

In England in 1962, an Icelandic man is found dead on a train. In his possession, policemen find a map on which a swastika has been drawn with a red pen. Who was he, and where was he going?

Based on the life of one of the ringleaders of a little-known neo-Nazi group that operated in Reykjavík in the late fifties and early sixties, Red Milk explores what shapes a young man and the enduring, disturbing allure of Nazi ideology.

In Red Milk, acclaimed author Sjón tells the story of Gunnar Kampen, the founder of Iceland’s antisemitic nationalist party, who has ties to a burgeoning network of neo-Nazi groups across the globe. Told in a series of scenes and letters spanning Kampen’s lifetime—from his childhood in Reykjavík during the Second World War, in a household strongly opposed to Hitler, through his education, his political radicalization, and his final clandestine mission to England—this taut and potent novel urges readers to confront the international legacy of twentieth-century fascism, and the often undetectable forces that drive some people to extremism.