Description
A new translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness’s masterpiece Late one snowy midwinter night, in a remote Icelandic fishing village, a penniless woman arrives by boat. She comes with her daughter, the young but gutsy Salka Valka. The two must forge a life in this remote place, where everyone is at the mercy of a single wealthy merchant, and where everything revolves around fish. After her mother’s tragic death, Salka grows into a fiercely independent-minded adult – cutting off her hair, educating herself and becoming an advocate for the town’s working class. A coming-of-age story, a feminist tale, a lament for Iceland’s poor – this is the funny, tender, epic story of Salka Valka. ‘Laxness is a poet who writes to the edges of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot’ Daily Telegraph TRANSLATED BY PHILIP ROUGHTON
About the Author
Halldór Laxness (1908-98) was born near Reykjavik, Iceland. His first novel was published when he was seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the outstanding novelists of the twentieth-century, he wrote more than sixty books. Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.
