Independent People by Laxness, Halldor

From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author: a magnificent novel that recalls Iceland's medieval epics and classics, set in the early twentieth century starring an ordinary sheep farmer and his heroic determination to achieve independence. - "A strange story, vibrant and alive.... There is a rare beauty in its telling." --Atlantic Monthly

If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to free himself is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

Author: Halldor Laxness
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 01/14/1997
Pages: 512
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780679767923

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/25/1996 pg. 68
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/1997 pg. 21
New York Times 02/02/1997 pg. 28
Newsweek 02/18/2008 pg. 17

About the Author
HALLDÓR LAXNESS was born near Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1902. His first novel was published when he was seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the outstanding novelists of the century, he has written more than sixty books, including novels short stories, essays, poems, plays and memoirs. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1998.