The stray cat that rearranged Icelandic literature belonged to a friend of Hildur Knútsdóttir’s. One day, without explanation, it simply decided to move in with someone else, a woman a few streets away, and never looked back. For most people, that’s an anecdote. For a horror writer who has spent sixteen years publishing everything from children’s novels to award-winning plays, it was the spark for a novella that would simmer on the back burner for a full decade.
Dead Weight, arriving May 26 from Tor Nightfire, is the English-language follow-up to The Night Guest, a book The New York Times named one of the best thrillers of 2024. But where that debut translated Knútsdóttir’s work into English for the first time, this 160-page chiller arrives with higher stakes: an international film adaptation is already in development, with Canadian director Kari Skogland (NOS4A2) attached and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson producing.
The novel has drawn comparisons to the slow-burning unease of Nordic noir, yet its violence is sharper, its emotions rawer, and its moral compass decidedly Icelandic. Publishers Weekly calls it “impressively subtle and slow-burning,” noting that protagonist Unnur is “a pressure cooker of building emotions” stoked by work, an affair, and a married lover.
Knútsdóttir is part of a wave of Icelandic speculative fiction finally breaking through to Anglophone readers, but her approach to horror is distinctly her own. She grounds her anxieties not in ghosts or monsters, though she loves them, but in statistical fact: for women, the most dangerous person in the world is their romantic partner. Dead Weight takes that terrifying reality and wraps it in a cat’s fur, a friendship’s fragile thread, and a question the author has spent countless hours considering: what’s the perfect way to get rid of a dead body in Iceland?
We spoke with Knútsdóttir about the decade-long journey from stage play to novella, the clinical precision of her violence, and why she’s hoping the next Icelandic publishing boom belongs to the weird, the uncanny, and the supernatural.
Well, however much I love horror with ghosts and monsters, it’s just a statistical fact that for women, the most dangerous thing in the world is their romantic partner. There are still so many women that are killed by their boyfriends or husbands. And that is, unfortunately, also the case in Iceland.
Hildur Knútsdóttir: Dead Weight, Icelandic Horror & The Art of Feminine Rage
Your new novel, Dead Weight, begins with such a simple, almost charming premise: a lost cat appearing at a stranger’s door. How did that initial spark evolve into the psychological thriller it becomes?
My inspiration for Dead Weight was a cat that used to live with my friend (I feel the term “owned” doesn’t really apply here). So my friend had been living with this cat for a couple of years and they got along well, or so she thought. But one day the cat decided to move in with someone else, a neighboring woman.
She tried to give the cat back to my friend, but as the cat could come and go as it pleased, it just kept going back to the new house and not my friend’s house, so everyone just had to accept that this was what the cat wanted and there really wasn’t anything that anyone could do about it.
And that story is what sparked Dead Weight for me. A cat deciding to move in with somebody is just a perfect way to have two strangers get tangled up in each other’s lives. And then I decided that it had to take a darker turn somehow, because that is just what my mind does with every story that I come up with.
The cat Io seems to function as more than just a plot device; she’s almost an intuitive force, sensing something wrong with Ásta’s new boyfriend before the human characters do. Was that intentional, this idea that animals perceive threats we rationalise away?
It was intentional. One of the things I find so fascinating with cats, and really just pets in general, is that these are creatures that we share our lives with and yet they have very different senses. And so it follows that they must perceive the world quite differently than we do and are bound to sense all kinds of things that are hidden from us.
I always used to have cats growing up and it would happen quite frequently that they would suddenly become fixated on a spot or seem to hear a sound, but I couldn’t see or hear anything. I now have a dog and I often find myself wishing I could experience what it’s like having a nose like he does, and how having such a keen sense of smell must feel like. Because there is a wealth of information around us that is accessible to him but not to me.
Was it a challenge to create this complete arc, from loneliness to friendship to violence, in such a compact space? How did you decide what to leave out?
It came quite easily actually. I’m not the type of writer who writes a lot and then cuts out a lot, too. Usually when I start writing I have been thinking about the story for a long time, and in the case of Dead Weight, it’s over ten years since I first got the idea for it. So it’s been simmering on the back burner for years. And what I love about the novella form is that it’s basically just a novel that has been reduced down to fit a smaller container, which I guess is what is bound to happen when something has been simmering for a long time.
The Publishers Weekly review describes Unnur as “a pressure cooker of building emotions”, frustrated with work, trapped in an affair with a married man, leading what feels like a “routine life”. Were you conscious of building that pressure from the very first pages, so readers feel the potential for explosion even during quiet scenes?
Another cooking metaphor! But yes, I did try to pack as much as I possibly could onto her shoulders from the beginning. I think Unnur hasn’t been happy for a really long time, maybe never. She’s a very closed off person and what happens is that she meets a woman and a cat that seem determined to coax her out of her shell, whether she likes it or not.
Ásta and Unnur’s friendship develops rapidly but feels earned on the page. What draws Unnur to Ásta, beyond the initial cat connection? Is it purely altruism, or does Ásta offer Unnur something she’s been missing?
I think it’s just plain old curiosity, actually. They are very different people, Unnur really doesn’t understand Ásta or her motivations, and I think she just wants to figure her out somehow. I think she also feels a little superior, maybe, which she probably enjoys. And when she realizes that Ásta might be in trouble she is already in too deep.
The abusive boyfriend, Ragnar, serves as the story’s antagonist, but he’s largely seen through the women’s perspectives rather than given his own voice. Was that a deliberate choice to keep the focus where it belongs, on the two women and their interior lives?
Yes. No person is ever simply a villain or a hero, we are all much more complicated than that. But a person can certainly play the part of a villain in another person’s life, or their story. And to Unnur, Ragnar is definitely a villain. It’s a lot more complicated for Ásta, as the story hints at, but as Unnur is the narrator we mostly see Ragnar through her eyes. I think she is quite determined not to see the better sides of Ragnar. And frankly, why should she? Seeing Ragnar as just a very bad man certainly makes some things she has to do a lot easier.
The title Dead Weight works on multiple levels. When did the title come to you, and how did it shape your thinking about the story’s themes?
So, the original title in Icelandic is “Gestir”, which means “Guests”. But we thought that might sound too much like my previous book “The Night Guest” (which was called “Myrkrið milli stjarnanna in Icelandic”, which roughly translates to “The Dark Between the Stars”) and so we decided to come up with a new title. And it was my editor at Tor Nightfire, Lindsey Hall, who came up with Dead Weight. She is just really, really good at coming up with titles! So the title came last, but I think we added a sentence somewhere in there to reinforce it, which wasn’t hard at all because it’s very on theme.
Several reviews mention that while the book is billed as horror, it “leans much more toward thriller and mystery, with horror grounded in real-life fears rather than supernatural elements. Was that grounding in realistic threat important to you, showing that the most frightening things don’t require ghosts or monsters?
Well, however much I love horror with ghosts and monsters, it’s just a statistical fact that for women, the most dangerous thing in the world is their romantic partner. There are still so many women that are killed by their boyfriends or husbands. And that is, unfortunately, also the case in Iceland.
We repeatedly score among the countries with the most gender equality in the world, our government is led by women, the president is a woman, the chief of police is a woman and the bishop is a woman. But still there is a lot of gendered violence towards women and girls, sexual violence and micro aggressions, and our court system seems very badly equipped at handling it. This is something that is always at the back of my mind when writing any story, but in this one it kind of took the front seat.
The publisher’s description promises a “gruesomely cathartic” experience. Can you talk about the word “cathartic” in relation to the novel’s violence? How do you balance making the violence viscerally impactful while also making it meaningful rather than gratuitous?
I guess they are referring to the scene where a violent man gets subjected to violence. When I was writing it I tried to be almost clinical about it. I also wanted to get it right, so I got a doctor to help me with it, he gave me all kinds of very good advice about human anatomy and what would work and how. But the clinical nature of the scene was also in line with what Unnur, the main character, was feeling at the time. It was probably also a coping strategy for her. Sometimes, in the moment, you simply don’t have the luxury to fall apart. The only way out is through.
On Craft and Translation
Mary Robinette Kowal translated Dead Weight from Icelandic and also narrates the audiobook. How closely did you work with her on the translation? Are there particular challenges in rendering Icelandic dialogue and sensibility into English while preserving the original tone?
This is the third book of mine that Mary Robinette has translated, and as always, it is such a pleasure to work with her. I have been translated to other languages before, but they have all been languages that I don’t read, so I couldn’t really have an opinion on the translation. So the way we have done it is that Mary Robinette will translate the book, and mark where she isn’t sure about something or if she has any questions, and then I will go over it and answer her questions if I can and sometimes make suggestions. And then that goes to the editor at Nightfire.
In The Night Guest, there were almost no changes from the Icelandic version, but in Dead Weight my editors suggested some changes, so I wrote the prologue and did some edits in English, and then that went back to Mary Robinette and she helped fix my English. She is such an amazing writer and she has such a good ear for language and I truly could not be in better hands. But I do sometimes worry that it might be frustrating for her to have the author looking over her shoulder as she’s translating and having all kinds of opinions about the text!
I don’t think there have been any particular challenges when it comes to translating between Icelandic and English. Both are Germanic languages and they have more in common than you might think. Most of our discussions were probably about whether an Icelandic saying would translate well or not. Like there’s this Icelandic saying that if you accomplish something hard we say you have “beaten the bear”. I think we left that one in, for example. The challenge was rather the differences between the societies and what needed explaining to an English speaking reader and what didn’t.
The story is set in Reykjavík, and the city often plays a subtle role in Icelandic crime fiction. How does the setting inform the mood of Dead Weight? Could this story happen anywhere, or is it distinctly Icelandic?
Iceland is a very close-knit society. I sometimes describe living here as having the “curse of being known”, because you can’t really go anywhere without running into someone you know or someone who knows your parents, or an ex, or the parents of an ex etc. And it’s really quite rare to meet someone that you have no connection to, which is the case with Unnur and Ásta.
They move in completely different circles, and I think that is what makes Unnur so curious about Ásta and it’s definitely one of the reasons Unnur feels safe opening up to her. So I guess it’s probably the kind of story that could take place anywhere where there are cats? Although when I think on it, I guess the fate of a certain person in Dead Weight is quite geographically specific.
Your previous book, The Night Guest, also received strong reviews. For readers coming to Dead Weight fresh, how would you compare the two experiences? Are there common threads in what draws you to a story?
They are both about women and cats. In fact I have written four novellas that I sometimes call my cat quadrology. They are all about women in Reykjavík and cats play a very big role in all of them.
When The Night Guest came out, some readers were rather mad at me for what happened to the cats, especially on Goodreads, so when I sent my editor Dead Weight I told her it was my redemption story. So the cats definitely survive in this one!
Both your novels take ordinary situations and locate the unease within them. What attracts you to that territory, the unsettling beneath the everyday?
I guess I am just always on the lookout for the unsettling, no matter the situation I am in. Especially if I am bored. I spend a lot of time in my own head and I’m always asking myself the question: What’s the worst that could possibly happen?
I’ve actually thought long and hard about why I’m so drawn to horror and creepy things in general, and I don’t really have a good answer for it. Maybe it’s because I was a really anxious child? Whenever my mom would be late to pick me up from school I was convinced that it wasn’t because she got stuck in a meeting but because she was dead. Maybe it’s because I grew up watching and loving the X-Files? Or maybe I should just see a psychoanalyst and try to figure out why I’m like this. But whatever the reason, it has certainly benefitted my career.
Your work has been published internationally, bringing Icelandic crime and thriller fiction to a global audience. Iceland has produced so many remarkable crime writers. What do you think explains that phenomenon? Why does your country produce so many compelling voices in this genre?
There have actually been written numerous scholarly dissertations on this at the University of Iceland. But I think it probably started in Scandinavia and then an Icelandic author called Arnaldur Indriðason started writing crime fiction set in Iceland, and he got really popular and started doing really well abroad, so other Icelandic authors took notice. But the discourse here in Iceland about it was quite funny at first, people were talking about whether a crime novel taking place in Iceland would be believable or not, because there is so little crime here and so few murders.
But then Icelandic crime fiction just really took off and everyone stopped wondering whether they were believable or not. And now Icelandic crime novels are the most popular books in the country, and they also do really well in translation. Which has been great for Icelandic literature. Writers, publishers and even the tourism industry has benefitted. And the local movie industry too, because there have been numerous adaptations produced, both for TV and film.
But I’m hoping that the next publishing boom will be Icelandic speculative fiction. I sometimes see parallels between the discourse about speculative fiction now and how people used to talk about crime fiction. They are wondering if an Icelandic fantasy, or an Icelandic story about aliens, is believable or not. Because for so long we have had this tradition of the socio-realist novel as the ultimate form of literature, when the fact is that our Sagas, histories and folklore are full of monsters, ghosts and uncanny creatures.
Dead Weight is 160 pages about two women, a cat, and the violence that finds them. In a world where readers have infinite choices and limited time, why this book? Why these 160 pages, right now?
One of the reasons I really love novellas is because you can sit down and read them in about two hours. Just like sitting down to watch a movie. And that is kind of how I hope both Dead Weight and The Night Guest are read, in one sitting, just like watching a movie.
If you could whisper one thing in a potential reader’s ear at the bookstore, something that captures what this story holds, what would it be?
“Psst! Hey, you! Do you want to know the perfect way to get rid of a dead body in Iceland?”
Dead Weight Kindle by Hildur Knútsdóttir
An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs – or even bodies – in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest.
Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.
When she tracks down the cat’s wayward owner, she finds a young woman just as lost and in need of help. Like a gust of cold air in a Reykjavík night, Ásta and her pet slip into Unnur’s life.
It’s unexpected, but welcome. Unnur likes the company, and she begins to rely on Ásta in turn. But like a black cat, trouble has been tailing her new friend, and Unnur is the only one there for Ásta when things take a violent turn.
The two women quickly learn: nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.
Also by Hildur Knútsdóttir:
Hildur Knútsdóttir
Hildur Knútsdóttir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, in the year 1984. She writes fiction for both adults and teenagers, as well as plays, screenplays and short fiction. Hildur is known for her evocative fantastical fiction and spine-chilling horror, but her co-authored work with Þórdís Gísladóttir about the humorous crises of modern teenage life has also been well received.
Her work has received various nominations and awards, including The Locus Award, The World Fantasy Award, The Icelandic Women’s Literary Prize, The Icelandic Literature Prize, The Reykjavík Children’s Literature Prize for best original work and The Icelandic Bookseller’s Prize. The New York times also named The Night Guest one of the best thrillers of 2024.
Hildur lives in Reykjavík with her husband and their two daughters.
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
