Independent People
- Published: 1 July 2010
- ISBN: 9781409000570
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 576
I love this book. It is an unfolding wonder of artistic vision and skill - one of the best books of the 20th century. I can't imagine any greater delight than coming to Independent People for the first time
Jane Smiley
Laxness is a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows a plot: he takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humour: It is not possible to be unimpressed
Fay Weldon on her 'Book of the Century', Daily Telegraph
Marvellously fluent and unaffected... one of the most original and skilfully written novels of the 20th century
Times Literary Supplement
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 life
New York Review of Books
Do yourself a favour and read Independent People. Opening this book is like opening a chest of treasures. Reading this book is like taking the treasures out and appreciating them, savouring them, one by one, sentence by sentence. This is the kind of novel that reminds you how glad you are that you learned to read in the first place
Chicago Tribune
To read him is to discover an extra tastebud. He creates a world that belongs in another dimension, like the landscape of his country - familiar, strange, seen as in a dream... an endearing and unforgettable voice
Daily Telegraph
Marvellously fluent and unaffected...one of the most original and skilfully written novels of the 20th century.
Carolyne Larrington, T.L.S
It moved me immensely
Barbara Kingsolver
A masterpiece
David Mitchell
The greatest Icelandic novel and surely one of the best books of the 20th century... I read it as a teenager and it had a life-lasting effect
Hallgrímur Helgason, author of 101 Reykjavik, Guardian