Recommendations from our site
“Independent People is the book that has just bowled me over in the last couple of years, more than anything else I’ve read. It is incredibly moving, about a poor Icelandic farmer who does not want to be dependent on anyone for anything…The book is great because of the author’s ability to create a world utterly different from ours, with a value system so different but also so totally human. I don’t know why he is not better known – he clearly is not obscure, he did win the Nobel Prize. But why hasn’t the whole of Britain read him? It is long, though – Independent People is for when you have a large chunk of time.” Read more...
The best books on Education and Society
Alison Wolf, Economist
For a sense of the foundations of Icelandic society, culture and psyche, fine places to start would be these beautifully written historic novels: Halldór Laxness’ Independent People and Jón Kalman Stefánson‘s Heaven and Hell.
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