Author Solveig Eggerz was interviewed for BookCast by Fairfax County Public Library Director Sam Clay. BookCast is sponsored by Virginia Commerce Bank through the Fairfax Library Foundation.

• A native of Iceland, Solveig Eggerz comes from a long-line of storytellers. Her great-great grandfather, a farmer and a protestant minister, wrote his autobiography when he was in his 80s, a book that documented 19th- century Icelandic regional history. Her grandfather, who was twice prime minister, wrote plays and essays. Her father, a foreign service officer, wrote fiction and non-fiction until the day he died at age 80.



• Eggerz has lived in Alexandria since 1974. She has worked as a journalist and professor of writing and research. Her first novel, Seal Woman, was published in May 2008 by Ghost Road Press.



• Seal Women is set in the late 1940s and chronicles a German woman’s journey to Iceland to work on a farm in response to an ad from the Icelandic Agricultural Association which was looking for laborers to work on farms.



• Eggerz became interested in writing the novel after seeing an Icelandic movie, “Maria,” about a woman who came out of the rubble of Berlin and worked on a primitive farm in Iceland. In addition to not speaking the same language, the Icelanders did not encourage the German laborers to speak about their experiences. As the daughter of a diplomat stationed in Germany, she used some of that experience in writing the novel.

Author's Web site