Salka Valka

(Paperback)

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Description

The author described Salka Valka as being about 'how a poor individual in a little village lives and dies with the trading company on the one hand and the Salvation Army on the other' A BRAND NEW TRANSLATION OF LAXNESS' TALE OF POVERTY AND GREED Set at the start of the twentieth century in a fictional Icelandic fishing village, Salka Valka follows the struggles of a penniless woman, Sigurlina, and her daughter, Salka Valka. They must eke out an existence in a small, isolated world where everyone is controlled by a single wealthy merchant, and where everything in life revolves around fish. Follow Salka's development from a precocious child to a fiercely independent-minded adult. Her romantic spirit is challenged when she starts a relationship with a firebrand idealist, Arnaldur. His fights against the trading company for human rights reflect the contemporary clash of social ideals in Iceland.

Reviews

Laxness was a genius * New York Review of Books *
Sprinkled throughout is Icelandic folk wisdom, dark humor, fatalism and a strong sense of the absurd... A tremendous book * Laxness in Translation *
Laxness is a poet who writes to the edges of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot * Daily Telegraph *

Author Bio

Halld r Laxness (Author) Halld r 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.