Running with Pirates On freedom, adventure, and fathers and sons

At the age of eighteen, Ká ri Gí slason arrives on the island of Corfu after a life-altering encounter with his father in Iceland. Looking for adventure, he decides to stay after meeting ‘ the Pirate’ , a mysterious Greek stranger who offers him work – only to find himself eventually fleeing the island, leaving behind a debt he promises to repay. Three decades later, as a father of two teenage sons, he returns to Corfu with his family. As he revisits his memories of the island, he begins to understand that this place has shaped the adult he has become, and that the inevitable letting go of his own children lies ahead. Full of the colour and vitality of the Greek islands, Running with Pirates traverses the joys and challenges of parenthood, the fearlessness of youth, the debts of our past, and the stories we tell ourselves and our children.

Ká ri Gí slason is a writer and academic who teaches creative writing and literary studies at QUT. He is the author of The Promise of Iceland (UQP, 2011), which told the story of return journeys he’ s made to his birthplace, and the novels The Ash Burner (UQP, 2015) and The Sorrow Stone (UQP, 2022). He is also the co-author, with Richard Fidler, of Saga Land (HarperCollins, 2017), and has written works of travel journalism, essays, reviews and radio scripts.