by Halldór Laxness, Brad Leithauser
The blurp says: This magnificent novel—which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature—is at last available to contemporary American readers.My guess is that the translation into modern English spoilt it for me. I could not keep going since the story line was rather straight but the ...
Written as a pair with PericlesReading Smiley on the back cover of this book:‘I can’t imagine any greater delight than coming to Independent People for the first time’ Really? I mean, REALLY????? Better than sex? Chocolate icecream??? What sort of life has Smiley lived that makes her say that. I co...
No me parece que este sea un libro para todos. Es pesado y un poco largo, a veces parece nunca terminar. Pero al mismo tiempo tiene una buena historia con personajes magníficos y detalles que te hacen comprender realmente que es lo que les sucede y de esa manera involucrarte en su historia. Todo env...
Translated from the Icelandic by J A ThompsonIntroduction by Brad LeithauserOpening: In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Isles came to live in the country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bells, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery.Miff-o...
This book left me flattened. I honestly don't know what I can say about it, though it's clearly a great book. More time isn't enough, I'll have to read it again—preferably with a character sheet, and a map, and at least a general knowledge of Icelandic history, of which I know so little—although, in...
i'm not sure i've ever hated a book so much in my life. by that i don't mean it's bad (surely one cannot be awarded a nobel prize for having written badly) and i don't mean it's not worth reading. what i mean is that there is just enough in this novel that is gripping to make it impossible to give u...
This book has 630 pages. Yet it could have easily been two times longer.Believe me.Laxness could have written more and probably did while working on this masterpiece by him, but I guess how it's better leaving some details out of the main frame, letting readers wonder about parallel individual stori...
The difficult life of a farmer in Iceland. Beautiful prose.
Finally finished Independent People today.I wonder how many times I read some version of Bjartur's statement of hisphilosophy: "Independence is the most important thing of all in life." (p.31)Independent man struggles to survive in Iceland in the early part of the 20th century. Recommended.
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