“Beautiful, like a painting out of the golden age,” was a critic's verdict on Auður A. Ólafsdóttir's novel Afleggjarinn (The Offspring), the story of a young man who sets out to restore a dilapidated monastic garden to its former beauty.

"Stories don't go out of date,” Sjón told us over the telephone. Starting out as a prominent advocate of the avant-garde, the ever-busy author never expected he'd write a novel about 17th century Iceland. But here he is. From the Mouth of the Whale is due out in the UK in May 2011.

According to Gerður Kristný – poet, novelist and children's book author – fear was an early settler in her poetry. “It's stayed there ever since, so I don't think I'll be evicting it by now,” she told us. Also discussed: Uganda, tattoo artists and the new book.

“The challenge, and no less pleasure, of the work behind my books is, in no small part, unearthing knowledge that helps us understand the mindset of a vanished world,” says Vilborg Davíðsdóttir, novelist and folkloristics scholar, who during the course of her twenty-year career has drawn notice for carefully wrought historical novels.

“I'm always dealing with being an Icelander. To be sure, it is a rather unusual lot to live out here in the middle of the Atlantic, speaking a language hardly anyone in the world understands,“ says author Rúnar Helgi Vignisson, who made a splash last summer with a new short-story collection.

Despite enjoying phenomenal success in Iceland as well as abroad, Olaf Olafsson remains oddly disassociated with the rest of Iceland's literary scene. His eighth novel, Restoration, will be published by HarperCollins in early 2012.

From We want Christmas in July to Last Rituals, from Iceland to the world (most recently the Arab world) Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s crime novels are on an international roll.

Kristín Helga Gunnarsdóttir is a multiple award winning children’s book author. She has cemented her status as one of Iceland’s foremost contemporary author with books that bridge the gap between generations.

“Each picture book needs to strike the right temperature, the right mood,” says author and artist Áslaug Jónsdóttir, whose visually striking and atmospheric books have enthralled children and adults alike for the past decade.

“We already live with oppressive tyranny and have done so for far too long, and although we may not care to notice, it is constantly on the rise in the world,” says author Vigdís Grímsdóttir in an interview with Sagenhaftes Island.

“The relationship between authors and their previous works is perhaps best compared to our relationship with dreams. They just disappear into another dimension,” says the author Pétur Gunnarsson, who has two books coming out in Germany this year.

Óskar Árni Óskarsson is an acknowledged master of short prose, with a gift for bringing out the surreal in the most quotidian of circumstances.

Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir is one of the most prominent Icelandic poets of her generation. We spoke with her about the art of poetry, and the possibilities of sneaking it to unsuspecting crime fiction buffs.

“I was reaching for things that were simply gone,” says author Kristín Steinsdóttir of her latest novel, Ljósa, which is based on the life of her grandmother. Mental illness, Kristín tells us, was not something people used to discuss. “Perhaps people felt that, just by talking of it, they put themselves at risk of falling ill.”

The works of Gyrðir Elíasson, one of Iceland's most renowned authors, reflect the dictum that “real humor needs a tragic sinker.”

“I think that my ingenuousness keeps me from understanding evil. And precisely because I don't understand it, evil keeps turning up in my work,” says novelist Óttar M. Norðfjörð. He has a new thriller out this Christmas.

“Equal rights were at the top of my mind when I began writing novels,” claims author Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir. Her works highlight a mostly neglected part of Icelandic history: The lives of its women, and the disparity between their aspirations on one hand, and their predestined roles on the other.

“I don't know how I could be an artist without being brutal,” says poet and writer Kristín Eiríksdóttir, who will release a short story-collection in October. “Where would I find inspiration for that?”

“Anybody, anything can inspire you: a museum brochure, a shampoo bottle, even a TV show about an Englishman's armpit,” says author Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson, whose next novel will provide a fresh take on greed, heartbreak, domesticated pigs and much besides.

Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson has long been renowned for his landscape photography. At the moment, he has two works underway: a book on the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull, due in late June, and a book of aerial photographs of Iceland, which will be called Earthward.

Prose constantly wormed its way into her visual art, until she channeled it into full-blown novels. Ragna Sigurðardóttir, with her unique visual style and willingness to experiment, has struck a new note in Icelandic literature.

"Icelandic paper is in some cases not completely worthless" says author Hallgrímur Helgason. His latest novel, The Hitman's Guide to House Cleaning, has just been published in German translation.

"It usually takes less than an economic crisis to cause a blow to the lives of ordinary people" says Guðmundur Óskarsson. His latest novel, Bankster, won the Icelandic Literary Prize 2009.

Steinar Sigurjónsson went his own way in his writing, which broke away from the  conventions of narrative and form. He has been hailed as one of the leaders of Icelandic modernist literature.

Þórarinn Eldjárn's novel The Blue Tower has recently been published in Denmark.

Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir has earned a place among Iceland's leading authors. She has been praised by critics and received awards for her work.