Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009 she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland & applied on a whim despite having two young children & a comfortable life in an English cathedral city. The resulting adventure was shaped by Icelands economic collapse which halved the value of her salary by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull & by a collection of new friends including a poet who saw the only bombs fall on Iceland in 1943 a woman who speaks to elves & a chef who guided Sarahs family around the intricacies of Icelandic cuisine. Sarah was drawn to the strangeness of Icelandic landscape & explored hillsides of boiling mud volcanic craters & fissures & the unsurfaced roads that link remote farms & fishing villages in the far north. She walked the coast path every night after her children were in bed watching the northern lights & the comings & goings of migratory birds. As the weeks & months went by the children settled in local schools & Sarah got to know her students & colleagues she & her family learned new ways to live.