Bjartus is a sheep farmer hewing a living from a blighted patch of land in Iceland. After 18 years of servitude to a master he despises, all he wants is to raise his flocks unbeholden to anyone. Nothing, not inclement weather, not his wives, not his family will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. But she too wants to live independently - and when Bjartus throws her from the house on discovering she is pregnant, her more temperate determination is set against his stony will.
From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, a magnificent, epic novel-"funny, clever, sardonic and brilliant" (Annie Proulx)-at last available to contemporary American readers.
Set in the early twentieth century, Independent People recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. 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.
