| The Great Weaver from Kashmir Contributor(s): Laxness, Halldor (Author), Roughton, Philip (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0979333083 ISBN-13: 9780979333088 Publisher: Archipelago Books OUR PRICE: $23.40 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 2008 Annotation: Laxness' first major novel, published in 1927, propelled Iceland into the modern world, but it's radical experimentation caused a stir as it told the story of a young poet who left the physical and cultural confines of Iceland's shores for the jumbled world of post-WWI Europe. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2008015345 |
| Physical Information: 1.6" H x 6.5" W x 7.3" (1.55 lbs) 450 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Great Weaver from Kashmir is Nobel Prize winner Halld r Laxness' first major novel, the book that propelled Icelandic literature into the modern world. Shortly after World War One, Steinn Elli i, a young philosopher-poet dandy, leaves the physical and cultural confines of Iceland's shores for mainland Europe, seeking to become the most perfect man on earth. His journey leads us through a huge range of moral, philosophical, religious, political, and social realms, from hedonism to socialism to aestheticism to Benedictine monasticism, exploring, as Laxness puts it, the far-ranging variety in the life of a soul, with the swings on a pendulum oscillating between angel and devil. Upon his return to Iceland, Steinn finds himself more conflicted than before, torn between love of the beauty and traditions of his homeland, longing and regret for his great adolescent love, Dilj , and his newfound monastic ideal, forcing him to make choices with fateful consequences. The Great Weaver from Kashmir is as much a domestic parlor drama as it is a novel of ideas; it can be seen as the downward spiral of an antihero or an exploration of idealism and loss; it is at once an inward-looking and daring early novel and a modern epic spun by a superior craftsman. Published when Laxness was only twenty-five years old, The Great Weaver from Kashmir's radical experimentation created a stir in Iceland. Appearing in English now for the first time, The Great Weaver is much more than a first major work by a literary master--it is a remarkable modernist classic written literally on the cultural and geographical fringes of modern Europe. |