I used this book as a text for a world literature class I once taught, and I'd have to say the selections are quite strong. Of course, Iceland has long had a deep and abiding commitment to literature. Anyone who's ever flown through Keflavik would probably share with me an amazement at how many books there were at the duty-free shop alone. This is a culture that loves literature, and it really shows in this anthology. Of particular note is the wonderful Halldor Laxness play "The Pigeon Banquet," which as far as I know is only found in translation in this anthology. Jane Smiley is right when she says one of the great joys in literature is discovering Laxness' work for the first time, and this play alone is worth the price of the anthology. I hope that this volume becomes available again.

All of the stories in this collection are worth reading, and some of them are very fine. I didn't expect to become so involved by some of them, such as "The Padlock," about a young boy's experience of the shame of being impoverished, or another tale of a child, the title story, in which a lovely thing (a cheap toy) becomes the occasion of a bitter scuffle between siblings. "The Changing Earth," the long tale that opens the collection, will remain in my mind as, with Turgenev's "First Love," an evocation of youthful romance. Sigurdsson also writes well about someone late in life, in his story of Pastor Bodvar.

The short story "The Changing Earth" (which opens this collection by Olafur Johann Sigurdsson) is the most beautifully written story of which I'm aware in world literature. Alan Boucher translated this piece from the Icelandic many years ago, but his new effort is superior and captures the author's use of language amazingly well.