Joachim B. Schmidt, born in Grisons, Switzerland in 1981, is a journalist and the author of novels and numerous short stories. He emigrated to Iceland in 2007, where he lives with his family in Reykjavi k and also works as a tour guide. Kalmann is his first novel to be translated into English.
Schmidt's novels show a sensitivity to how the accumulation of seemingly small events makes up the drama of human life. In his recent works, he has built literary bridges between his birth country Switzerland, and Iceland, the country he lives in. In them, as elsewhere, he proves that it is by telling our shared histories and sharing our individual stories that we overcome being strangers and instead meet eye to eye as citizens of a single world. Sjo n