Hannah Kent in conversation with Pip Williams 'Always Home, Always Homesick'
In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrived at Keflavik Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. Hours passed as she waited for her contact to pick her up but no one arrived. Instead, she caught the last bus to Reykjavik, where a man in a dressing gown was waiting for her at the depot. That night she slept off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, completely unaware that, years later, she would return to the same building to write Burial Rites, a retelling of Iceland’s last execution, and an offering to the country that would utterly change her life’s trajectory.
Written with rich detail and humorous and poignant anecdotes, Always Home, Always Homesick is a love letter from a writer to her muse. At once a memoir of her experiences of living in Iceland, and a wider consideration of the centrality of literature of the nation’s culture and identity, it explores how Iceland has shaped the person she is today, alongside how this tiny nation continues to be a powerhouse of creative expression.
Books available for purchase and signing.
