凛冬将至 (2013)

Burial Rites (2013) is a novel by Australian author Hannah Kent, based on a true story about the last woman to be executed in Iceland.

Premise

Burial Rites tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a servant in northern Iceland who was condemned to death after the murder of two men, one of whom was her employer, and became the last woman put to death in Iceland in 1830.

Background

Kent was inspired to write Burial Rites during her time as an exchange student in Iceland when she was 17, where she learnt the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. She then made it the topic of her honours thesis and PhD at Flinders University, with additional mentoring by Geraldine Brooks. After this, Kent was awarded the Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2011.

Publication

Burial Rites was published in 2013 by Pan Macmillan in Australia, by Little, Brown in the US, and by Picador in the UK.

Reviews

Burial Rites was well-received by critics and other writers. English novelist Sarah Moss, writing in The Guardian, called the novel "beautiful and compelling", and that Kent was a writer to watch. Ben Etherington wrote in the Sydney Review of Books that the novel was a "big book", and mentioned good reviews by The New York Times and by Michael McGirr in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, among others. He wrote that the novel had had good reviews in the UK by The Observer, The Telegraph, Daily Express, and The Sunday Times.

Stephen Romei, literary editor of The Australian, who spoke to Kent about what led her to write the novel, drew a parallel between Burial Rites and Hilary Mantel trilogy of novels about Tudor England. He also wrote "Kent's affinity for the landscape resounds on every page of Burial Rites".

Film adaptation

In 2017, it was announced that Luca Guadagnino would direct a film adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence. As of May 2025 the film is still "in development".

School curricula use

Burial Rites was included in the Victorian Certificate of Education text response texts from 2014, and in the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority prescribed text list in 2020.