Award-winning theatre and screenwriter Jón Atli Jónasson has made the move into crime fiction with his debut novel, Broken. UK and Commonwealth, excluding Canada, rights to this dramatic and fast-moving police procedural were acquired by Coylus Books from David H Headley at D H H Literary Agency and will appear in mid-2025.
This hard-boiled narrative (translated by Quentin Bates) centres around the pairing of police officers Dóra, struggling to cope with the effects of a serious head injury sustained in a shoot-out, and Rado, the son of Serbian refugees, whose career as a detective is derailed due to family links to a criminal syndicate.
Broken is set in the darker side of present-day Reykjavík that tourists don’t get to see. It’s shot through with dark humour and characters that leap off the page as Dóra and Rado search for a missing teenager against the backdrop of a brutal gang war that embroils Rado’s family.
One of Iceland’s foremost playwrights, Jón Atli Jónasson, has been nominated for The Nordic Film Prize on three occasions. He was named the Nordic Radio Dramatist in 2011.
His plays have been performed in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Athens. He has written several scripts for film, most notably The Deep, produced by 101 Studios Iceland, based on his own play. It was shortlisted for The 85th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Feature 2015.
Photo: Hrafn Jónsson
