Independent People, Halldor Laxness
Independent People, Halldor Laxness
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Independent People

Author: Halldor Laxness

Narrator: Michael Page

Unabridged: 20 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/18/2017


Synopsis

This magnificent novel—which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature—is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early twentieth century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And 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.

About Halldor Laxness

Halldor 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 wrote more than sixty 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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on May 17, 2019

I see a number of my GR friends have read this but A BILLION MORE of them have this listed as To Read. Yes, I see why. Every single person who has read this thinks this is a masterpiece but you stroke your chin and you think do I really need a 600 page novel about Icelandic sheep farmers in my life?......more

Goodreads review by Jim on January 04, 2022

[Edited 1/4/21] I don’t usually cite book cover comments from critics in my reviews, but I’ll make an exception for this book by the 1955 Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author (1902-1998). In the introduction, Brad Leithauser, a poet, novelist and English professor called it (at the time he wrote the......more

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on August 03, 2015

Way back when. My wife and went to our prominent local bookseller over the holidays in 2003. She asked me if I had read anything by Laxness and I adroitly responded, "who?" She bought something else and the following day I jogged down to the public library. My face burning with shame I checked this......more

Goodreads review by Brian on November 16, 2013

Everything that one has ever created achieves reality. And soon the day dawns when one finds oneself at the mercy of the reality one has created. There is a subtle beauty in this text - an expansive desolation that plays as canvas to Laxness' protagonist Bjartur of Summerhouses creation of an indepen......more