When Thor Vilhjálmsson's first book, Madurinn er alltaf einn (One Is Always Alone), a prose collection, was published in 1950, the author half believed that a national holiday would be declared, people would get off from work, and there would be dancing in the streets. When he went downtown, however, people were completely normal; they acted as if nothing had happened. This little collection marked, nonetheless, the debut of a brilliant literary career--some later called it a watershed--as the substance of Thor's work was considered new and difficult to categorize in a specific literary genre. Madurinn er alltaf einn comprises sixty brief texts--poems, prose poems, and miniature narratives; some of these works might be called sketches, itinerant portraits of nameless individuals. Also in the collection are nine drawings by the author, making Madurinn er alltaf einn effectively a multimedia work, a harbinger of the cerebral power, experimentation...