On a winter’s evening in January 2020 two women stood talking in the foyer of a cinema in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík. One of them, dressed smartly for the occasion in a red blazer, was Eliza Reid, the wife of Iceland’s president. The other, listening intently, was Nara Walker, an Australian artist who’d cofounded the event that both women were there to celebrate – the Reykjavik Feminist film festival.
At first glance, it wasn’t a remarkable scene. Unless you knew that Walker was still on probation for a serious assault conviction, having been released from a Reykjavík prison less than a year earlier. Or if you’d read the breathless coverage of her story in the tabloid media, where she’d been branded “the Australian tongue-biter” – the woman who bit off her husband’s tongue during a fight. In Iceland, and beyond, she was infamous.
