Paradise Reclaimed (Vintage International) - Softcover

Laxness, Halldor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375727582 ISBN 13: 9780375727580

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2002

Synopsis

IAn idealistic Icelandic farmer journeys to Mormon Utah and back in search of paradise in this captivating novel by Nobel Prize--winner Halldor Laxness.
The quixotic hero of this long-lost classic is Steinar of Hlidar, a generous but very poor man who lives peacefully on a tiny farm in nineteenth-century Iceland with his wife and two adoring young children. But when he impulsively offers his children's beloved pure-white pony to the visiting King of Denmark, he sets in motion a chain of disastrous events that leaves his family in ruins and himself at the other end of the earth, optimistically building a home for them among the devout polygamists in the Promised Land of Utah. By the time the broken family is reunited, Laxness has spun his trademark blend of compassion and comically brutal satire into a moving and spellbinding enchantment, composed equally of elements of fable and folkore and of the most humble truths.

About this title

Review:

"Laxness has genuine magic as a novelist."-New York Herald Tribune

"Full of an earthy poetry . . . a style wonderfully wise and entirely Scandinavian in its combination of magic and reality." --The New York Times Book Review

"The qualities of the sagas pervade his writing, and particularly a kind of humor--oblique, stylized and childlike--that can be found in no other contemporary writer." --Atlantic

Synopsis:

The whimsical hero of this long-lost classic is Steinar of Hlidar, a generous but very poor man living peacefully on a tiny farm in nineteenth-century Iceland. Steinar is the possessor of an unusual pure-white pony, one that his two children believe has fairy blood and which he repeatedly refuses to sell to his richer neighbours, wanting to preserve the children's idyllic fantasy world as long as possible. But when Steinar impulsively offers his family's prized pony to the visiting King of Denmark, he sets in motion - in true fairy-tale fashion - a disastrous chain of events that leave his family in tatters and himself at the other end of the earth, in America. His quixotic attempt to prepare a paradise for his loved ones there, among the devout polygamists in the Mormon Promised Land of Utah, results in their spectacular ruin. By the time the broken family is reunited, Halldor Laxness has spun his trademark blend of compassion and comically brutal satire into a moving and spellbinding enchantment, composed equally of elements of fable and folkore and of the most humble truths.

1)SUCCESS OF INDEPENDENT PEOPLE: Vintage's reissue of Laxness's novel revived interest in a forgotten classic: the Vintage edition has sold more than 50,000 copies in 13 printings. 2)LAXNESS CENTENARY: Laxness is a favourite of such writers as Annie Dillard, Annie Proulx, and Jane Smiley

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375727582
• ISBN 13: 9780375727580
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320