Salka Valka
Halldor Laxness / Philip Roughton (Translator)
Language: English
Published by Archipelago Books, NY, 2022
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Browsing Is Arousing, Middlebury, VT, U.S.A.Browsing Is Arousing
AbeBooks seller since March 22, 2026
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 14.03
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Add to basketItem description from seller
Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 624 pages. A fresh translation of Nobel Prize?winning author Halldór Laxness's modernist masterpiece, Salka Valka. A feminist coming of age tale, an elegy to the plight of the working class and the corrosive effects of social and economic inequality, and a poetic window into the arrival of modernity in a tiny industrial town, Salka Valka is a novel of epic proportions, living and breathing with its expansive cast of characters, filled with tenderness, humor, and remarkable pathos. Clean copy. Record # 401034.
Seller Inventory # 401034
- Title
- Salka Valka
- Author
- Halldor Laxness / Philip Roughton (Translator)
- Publisher
- Archipelago Books, NY
- Publication year
- 2022
- Condition
- Very Good
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1953861245
- ISBN 13
- 9781953861245
A fresh translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness's modernist masterpiece, Salka Valka.
A feminist coming of age tale, an elegy to the plight of the working class and the corrosive effects of social and economic inequality, and a poetic window into the arrival of modernity in a tiny industrial town, Salka Valka is a novel of epic proportions, living and breathing with its expansive cast of characters, filled with tenderness, humor, and remarkable pathos.
On a mid-winter night, an eleven-year-old Salvör and her unmarried mother Sigurlína disembark at the remote, run-down fishing village of Óseyri, where life is "lived in fish and consists of fish." The two women struggle to make their way amidst the domineering, salt-worn men of the town and their unsolicited attention, and, after Sigurlína's untimely death, Salvör pays for her funeral and walks home alone, precipitating her coming of age as a daring, strong-willed young woman who chops off her hair, earns her own wages, educates herself through political and philosophical texts, and, most significantly, becomes an advocate for the town's working class, ultimately organizing a local chapter of the seamen's union.
"Nowhere in Laxness's novels is the conflict between the shining ideal of socialism and the dignity of individual people on plainer display than in Salka Valka... It never even occurs to Salka that the bastards might grind her down." -- Salvatore Scibona, The New Yorker
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Philip Roughton is an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature. His translations include works by many of Iceland's best-known writers, including Laxness, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Bergsveinn Birgisson, Steinunn Sigurðardóttir, and others. He was awarded the 2015 American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Competition Prize, for his translation of Laxness' novel Gerpla (Wayward Heroes), the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for 2016, for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's The Heart of Man, and an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship for 2017.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Browsing Is Arousing
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