Icelandic author was raped

One of Iceland's best known authors, Hallgrímur Helgason, writes a frank description of having been victim of a rape during his study years in Munich in his new autobiography, Sjóveikur in München (Seasick in Munich). 

In an interview with newspaper Fréttatíminn,  Helgason , who is also a respected artist, says that during the period of writing the book he had to face what had happened. "This is just one of the things that happen, you get raped by a male stranger in a foreign city. That's what happened to me that winter and in the end I just had to write about it exactly as it occurred. I had locked that memory so tightly in life's cupboard that the lock had almost rusted together."

The autobiography takes place only during the space of one year in Helgason's life, 1981 when he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and is out now in Icelandic. 

In the Fréttatíminn interview Helgason is asked whether getting married and having children ruined the artist life. He replies," No I was ready for that then, I was 44 years old and sick of being a barfly. I had a daughter in 1984 but she wasn't brought up by me, she lived in Höfn in East Iceland and I lived abroad. Then I had two children in 2003 and 2005 and started living what you would call a normal family life, and I've been doing that since. I still need time alone and then I go to the countryside to write, for a month at a time. And that's when something strange hits you: you miss your family!"

Helgason's best known novels include 101 Reykjavik and Stormland.