HALLDOR LAXNESS — INDEPENDENT PEOPLE

Image: author photo

This is a story of an Icelandic sheep farmer trying and failing and trying to do his thing in the 20th century. It’s specific; one passage, for instance, goes into great detail about tax schemes in the municipality of Fjord in the 1920s. Specific. Yet on every page you’ll still find some universal truth, distilled to full strength. Universal truths are not so much an aim but an effortless flow, they come one after another, with precision and depth, eliciting (from this reader) sigh after sigh after sigh. The American novel pats itself on the back for stories that transcend particular circumstances to become iconic, myths on a global scale (when translated), stories you know in your bones before you read them. Independent People does it better. And humbly — though I don’t quite know how it pulls off this last trick. This is the best novel I’ve read in 2021.