
World Light
Halldor Laxness(Author)
Vintage Books (Publisher)
Published on 8. October 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
624 pages
978-0-375-72757-3 (ISBN)
Description
As an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation: the belief that one day he will be a great poet. The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Olaf comes to lead the paradigmatic poet's life of poverty, loneliness, ruinous love affairs and sexual scandal. But he will never attain anything like greatness.
As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf's ambition drives him onward-and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women-World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.
As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf's ambition drives him onward-and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women-World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Random House USA Inc
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 206 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
449 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-375-72757-3 (9780375727573)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Person
Halladór Laxness was born near Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1902. His first novel was published when he wsa seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction, and one of the outstanding novelists of the century, he has written more than sixty books, including novels, short stories, essays, poems, plays, and memoirs. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1998.