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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
The brutality of subsistence farming and the Icelandic wilderness; some deaths from hardship
Language
Barely any
Mild language in the literary register
Sexual Content
Some
Some sexual content in the literary fiction register; Bjartur's marriages
Substance Use
Barely any
Drinking in the rural Icelandic setting
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Strong psychological content: a man so committed to independence that it becomes a form of cruelty to everyone around him; the psychological cost of poverty and pride
What this book is about
Bjartur of Summerhouses has spent eighteen years in servitude to earn his freedom and his own sheep farm in the Icelandic wilderness. Now free, he will sacrifice anything — including the wellbeing of his children — to maintain his precious independence. Halldór Laxness's monumental Icelandic novel is darkly funny, devastating, and profound: one of 20th-century literature's great portraits of stubborn human pride against the indifferent brutality of nature and poverty.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
A protagonist whose values cause genuine harm to his family
Deaths from hardship and cold in the Icelandic wilderness
Dark examination of poverty and pride
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