Promotional Information

Icelandic Nobel Prize-winner, by the 'Tolstoy of the North'

About the Author

Halld r Laxness (1908-98) was born near Reykjavik, Iceland. His first novel was published when he was seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the outstanding novelists of the twentieth-century, he wrote more than sixty books. Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.

Reviews

The greatest Icelandic novel and surely one of the best books of the 20th century... I read it as a teenager and it had a life-lasting effect
*Guardian*

Laxness is a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows a plot: he takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humour: It is not possible to be unimpressed
*Daily Telegraph*

Marvellously fluent and unaffected... one of the most original and skilfully written novels of the 20th century
*Times Literary Supplement*

There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life
*New York Review of Books*

Do yourself a favour and read Independent People. Opening this book is like opening a chest of treasures. Reading this book is like taking the treasures out and appreciating them, savouring them, one by one, sentence by sentence. This is the kind of novel that reminds you how glad you are that you learned to read in the first place
*Chicago Tribune*

A masterpiece

To read him is to discover an extra tastebud. He creates a world that belongs in another dimension, like the landscape of his country - familiar, strange, seen as in a dream... an endearing and unforgettable voice
*Daily Telegraph*

It moved me immensely

Marvellously fluent and unaffected...one of the most original and skilfully written novels of the 20th century.
*T.L.S*