Physical tbr - icelandic lit

Independent People

Halldor Laxness · 1997

<b>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." —<i>Atlantic Monthly</i><br> </b> <br> 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.<br><br>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 <i>him</i>. 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, <i>Independent People</i> is a masterpiece.