Australian Story (1996)

Season 18: Episode 22

This week, the story of a young Adelaide student and the obsession that's made her an international publishing sensation. She's 28 year old Hannah Kent and her novel on an Icelandic murderess sparked a bidding war. Now there is talk of a Hollywood movie. It started with a Rotary exchange visit to Iceland when Hannah Kent was just 17. She felt lonely and claustrophobic in the alien 24 hour darkness of the Icelandic winter. But hearing, by chance, about the execution site she became intrigued by the story of Agnes Magnusdottir, beheaded for murder in Iceland some 200 years ago, and the last woman to suffer that fate. In the program Hannah Kent tells the untold story of her decade long interest in the macabre story of Agnes and how it's taken her to strange and unexpected places.