Author of the Month: Halldór Laxness
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for October is the Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1955.
Born in Reykjavik, he spent his early life on a farm a few miles from the capital, where his grandmother, as he reports in his memoir Heiman eg for, ‘sang me ancient songs before I could talk, told me stories from heathen times and sang me cradle songs from the Catholic era’. Although he spent long periods away from Iceland, his works remain rooted in the landscape and culture of his homeland: Michael Hofmann wrote in the LRB of Independent People, perhaps his masterpiece, that it is ‘remarkably unconsoled and unconsoling, a book full of deaths and calamities and unhappy persistence, a book with real rain in it, and real cold and real turf smoke.’
Take a look at a selection of his books here, and come and meet them in the flesh at Bury Place throughout October.
From the publisher:
Translated by J.A. ThompsonThe great Icelandic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Halldór Laxness'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…
From the publisher:
Translated by Magnus Magnusson*BY THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE*'Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice' Nicholas ShakespeareAbandoned as a baby,…
From the publisher:
Translated by Magnus MagnussonWhen the Americans make an offer to buy land in Iceland to build a NATO airbase after the Second World War, a storm of protest is provoked throughout the country. Narrated by a country girl from the north, the…
From the publisher:
TRANSLATED BY PHILIP ROUGHTONA new translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Halldor Laxness's masterpieceLate one snowy midwinter night, in a remote Icelandic fishing village, a penniless woman arrives by boat. She comes with her daughter,…
From the publisher:
Translated by Magnus Magnusson'Wildly original, morose, uproarious... It is also one of the funniest books ever written' Susan SontagA naive young man is sent by the bishop of Iceland to investigate a small town that has reportedly lost its…
From the publisher:
Translated by Philip RoughtonFirst published in 1952, Halldór Laxness’s Wayward Heroes offers an unlikely representation of modern literature. A reworking of medieval Icelandic sagas, the novel is set…
From the publisher:
From the Nobel Prize winner comes a captivating novel about an idealistic Icelandic farmer who journeys to Mormon Utah and back in search of paradise. “Full of an earthy poetry…a style wonderfully wise and entirely…
From the publisher:
Translated from Icelandic by Philip Roughton“An enthralling, heartening study of a man of unflagging interest in life” Independent“A thoroughly researched biography” New York Review of Books“Provides…
From the publisher:
Translated by Magnus MagnussonA magnificently humane novel from the acclaimed Icelandic Nobel Prize winner: as an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation, the belief that one day he will be a…
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