Sigrún Eldjárn

When “great-grandma” dies, Karitas has to leave the safe place where she has grown up and find another family. The only thing she has inherited is an old silver key and the advice to trust no-one until they have shown themselves to be good people.

Silfurlykillinn (“The Silver Key”) is a novel of the future, in which Sigrún Eldjárn throws the young reader into a post-apocalyptic world where food and water is scarce and people fight ruthlessly for anything that can help them survive. Some physical remains of the old age of prosperity remain, but they are useless, and all of the technical skills have been lost. Children in this hard world are vagabonds and constantly on their guard. But Karitas finds the family she needs, and together they set out to find her vanished mother and the knowledge to which Karitas holds the key.

Sigrún Eldjárn is an artist and one of Iceland’s most popular and best-known writers of children’s books. In 2018, Sigrún received the Icelandic Literary Prize for Silfurlykillinn in the category Fiction for Children and Young Adults.