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Guests | December 29, 2009

Alex Lemon: IMG Everyone Called Me "Happy"



I have nystagmus and diplopia and chronic pain and ataxia, and I can tell that I'm nervous and excited that my new book is out today because all of... Continue »
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    Happy: A Memoir

    Alex Lemon

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World Light

by Halldor Kiljan Laxness

World Light Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Synopsis:

Determined that he will someday be a great poet, Olaf Karason pursues his dream in the face of the contempt and indifference of the people around him, taking up a life of poverty, loneliness, failed love affairs, and sexual scandal as he journeys across Iceland to seek his goal. Reprint. 17,500 firs

About the Author

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.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780375727573
Author:
Laxness, Halldor Kiljan
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Author:
Halldor Laxness
Author:
Halldor Laxness Translated by Magnus Magnusson, With a New Introduction by Sven Birkerts
Location:
New York
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
European - German
Subject:
Poets, Icelandic.
Edition Description:
Vintage Intl
Series Volume:
838-17
Publication Date:
October 2002
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
624
Dimensions:
8.10x5.16x1.13 in. .99 lbs.

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