Fiction
November 2022
The Cocoa Cult
by Guðrún Brjánsdóttir
A brilliant, toe curling, insightful, humorous snapshot of our time by prizewinning author. ABOUT THE PLOT Hjalti suffers from a broken heart. And from anxiety. And from OCD and obsessive thinking. Ever since his girlfriend Anna left him he's been feeling incredible low and hasn't been able to turn his situation around. He hasn't had a good night's sleep in weeks. When he walks upstairs to complain about some noise, he's invited to take part in a healing ceremony in a so-called cocoa club. Eventhough Hjalti thinks it sounds rather silly, he's so desperate to feel better that he decides to tag along. The intense pure cocoa from Guatemala has a suprisingly positive effect on Hjalti, and he spontanously decides to join the cocoa club for a healing trip to the most remote part of Iceland. In the breathtakenly beautiful national park between glaciers and sand plains, Hjalti realises that the domineering leader of the cocoa club doesn't think that the rules of the national park apply to them, and the cocoa club members soon fall out with each other as well as the local park rangers. Hjalti is up for a completely different experience than he was expecting. In THE COCOA CULT, author Gudrún Brjánsdóttir dissects her own time with dark humour, affection, insigth and toe curling accuracy. The protagonist Hjalti is self-centred, climate guilty, overthinking, OCD striken, anxious, pleasing, passive and conflict-averse - but you still can't help rooting for him. He's just searching for the capricious, flickering love as so many others.
