Cab 79

A young man from the countryside comes to Reykjavik to work as a taxi driver, and strikes up an acquaintaintance with a wealthy young woman. The gulf between their very different backgrounds inevitably leads to a turbulent relationship and to tragedy, against a backdrop of a nation finding its way in a new age. Published only a few years after the Second World War, Indridi G. Thorsteinsson's Cab 79 triggered a storm at the time. It presents an uncompromising snapshot of the swift changes taking place in Icelandic society as this once remote and newly independent country struggled to come to terms with the twentieth century and all the benefits and drawbacks that came with this new age of affluence, leisure, cars, and the presence of foreign troops. Cab 79 was a controversial book when it appeared in 1955, opening the way for a new generation of Icelandic writers, and a few years subsequently became an equally controversial movie, regarded as a milestone in Icelandic cinema. "Cab 79 is undoubtedly the most important posy-WWII Icelandic novel" Yrsa Sigurdardottir