A young writer in her thirties who has just separated and is just beginning to test the uncertain terrain of a new relationship, shortly after the serious financial crisis that hit Iceland at the end of the last decade, suddenly finds herself in territory. unknown, wondering about the true foundations on which love and family life should be built, the links with his country and with the land itself. She then embarks on a journey that will take her to see the ruins of the houses of her ancestors, who tried to live in harmony with each other and with nature, a search —accompanied at times by her brother, the archaeologist, and sometimes by her lover. , the ornithologist, two men for whom she feels a strong fascination—who will lead her all over Iceland, but also France and England, trying to understand what constitutes, ultimately, a home.

Written in the form of a diary, weaving together elements of history, archaeology, philosophy, ecology and narrative, in Land of Love and Ruins—a novel that won the European Union Prize for Literature, compared by critics to the writing of W.G. Sebald, Jenny Offill or Teju Cole— Oddný Eir creates a new form of intimacy with the reader, inviting him to question his own relationship with family stories, nature or traditions.