Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

I AM INDEBTED TO MANY people who have assisted me with the research and writing of this book. My sincere thanks to Knútur Óskarsson and his mother for your generosity and coffee, assistance with translation and all the late night conversations at Ósar. Meeting you both remains a singular moment of synchronicity and good fortune. Thank you to Jón Torfason and your fellow archivists at Þjóðskjalasafn Íslands for your assistance and enthusiasm, and for finding me the original letters from the trial. Thank you to Guðmundur Jóhannsson for your vastly useful letter. To the librarians and staff at the Þjóðminjasafn, Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Kringlan Library, Árbæjarsafn and Glumbær, thank you for your patience and assistance.

To my ‘Icelandic family’ — þakka þér kærlega fyrir . Without you this novel could never have been written. My love and gratitude to dear Pétur Björnsson, Regína Gunnarsdóttir, Hera Birgisdóttir, Halldór Sigurðsson, Sylvía Dögg Gunnarsdóttir and María Reynisdóttir, for your kindness, spare beds and generosity. I am also grateful to the many other Icelanders I have met who have contributed to this novel in strange and various ways. I hope you see this novel as the dark love letter to Iceland I intend it to be.

Thanks to those at Flinders University, especially Ruth Starke, who has supported me since the very beginning. Thank you to my early readers, Kylie Cardell and Kalinda Ashton, and to Kate Douglas, David Sornig and Bec Starford for your friendship and the opportunities you have given me.

To Geraldine Brooks, for your sage observations and mentorship — thank you so much. To the Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award, the SA Writers’ Centre and to Peter Bishop, Valerie Parv, Patrick Allington and Mark Macleod for your generous comments: thank you.

I’m ever so grateful to the marvellous Pippa Masson and dear Annabel Blay at Curtis Brown Australia. Thank you to Gordon Wise, Kate Cooper and colleagues at Curtis Brown UK, and to Dan Lazar at Writers House. To Emma Rafferty, Sophie Jonathan, Amanda Brower and Jo Jarrah for your keen eyes and considered suggestions — thank you. To my wonderful publishers, Alex Craig and Paul Baggaley at Picador, and Judy Clain at Little, Brown, thank you for believing in this book.

Finally, my most heartfelt thanks go to Pam, Alan and Briony for your love and constancy, and for caring about Agnes Magnúsdóttir as much as I do. And last, but never least: thank you to Angharad, for never doubting, and for fortifying me every day, every hour.

Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide in 1985. As a teenager she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. Hannah is the co-founder and deputy editor of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings , and is completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011 she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award. Burial Rites is her first novel.