A beautifully jacketed hardcover edition of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s beloved epic novel about a stubbornly independent Icelandic sheep farmer and his spirited daughter.
Set in the early twentieth century, Independent People recalls both Iceland’s medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book’s protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence 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
Halldor Laxness was born near Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1902. His first novel was published when he was 17. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the most outstanding novelists of the century, Laxness wrote more than 60 books, including novels, short stories, essays, poems, plays, and memoirs. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Laxness died in Iceland in 1998.
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