I have always been writing, as far back as I can remember. When I was a young boy I wrote stories and poetry for my parents and my grandparents, even a bit of detective fiction, all handwritten into old notebooks. As a teenager I started translating and writing short stories, and at the age of seventeen I translated my first novel from English into Icelandic, an Agatha Christie mystery. I continued to translate Christie’s books during law school and even after I graduated and started working as a lawyer, in total fourteen novels, but eight years ago I decided to start writing crime novels of my own, and I am still doing that (and also write a bit of poetry once in a while). I also still work as a lawyer and I’m sometimes asked which I would give up first, the law or writing. It’s a slightly difficult question, but the honest answer is probably that I could never give up writing. I don’t need to spend my whole day writing, but I do need to do something creative each day, whether through my own writing or through translation. I don’t really know why, but it’s just who I am, and one of the things that defines me the most.

http://www.ragnarjonasson.com/