{"product_id":"world-light-isbn-9780375727573","title":"World Light","description":"\u003cb\u003eA magnificently humane novel from the acclaimed Icelandic Nobel Prize winner: 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. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this extraordinary 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—\u003ci\u003eWorld Light\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates how the creative spirit can   survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human   vessel.\"[Laxness is] a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot: He takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humor: it is not possible to be unimpressed.” \u003ci\u003e-- Daily Telegraph \u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[An author of] compassionate, scathing novels.” –Annie Dillard, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"[Laxness is] a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot: He takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humor: it is not possible to be unimpressed.” \u003ci\u003e-- Daily Telegraph \u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Laxness is a brilliant writer.”  \u003ci\u003e--The Washington Post \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eHalladór 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.Book One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Revelation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof the Deity\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was standing on the foreshore below the farm with the oyster  catchers and purple sandpipers, watching the waves soughing in and  out. He was probably shirking. He was a foster child, and therefore  the life in his heart was a separate life, a different blood, without  relationship to the others. He was not part of anything, he was on  the outside, and there was often an emptiness around him. And long  ago he had begun to yearn for some indefinable solace. This narrow  bay with its small blue shells and the waves gently rippling in over  the sand, with the cliffs on one side and a green headland on the  other--this was his friend. It was called Ljósavík.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid he have no one, then? Was no one kind to him except this little  bay? No, no one was kind to him. But on the other hand, no one was  downright unkind to him, not so that he had to fear for his life.  That did not come until later. When he was teased, the teasing was  mostly in fun; the difficulty was in knowing how to take it. When he  was thrashed, the thrashing arose from necessity; it was Justice. But  there were many things which did not concern him, thank goodness. For  instance the elder brother, Jónas, who owned several sheep and a  share in a fishing boat, once threw a basin of water over his mother,  Kamarilla, as she was going down the stairs one evening. That was  nothing to be concerned about. But when the younger brother, Júst,  who was also a sheep-farmer and boat-owner, amused himself by picking  him up by the ears because it was such fun finding out how much pain  the dear little chap could stand, that did concern him, unfortunately.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn springtime the brothers dug holes through the overhanging banks of  the river farther up the valley and guddled for trout; then they  threw the living fish at the boy toddling unsuspectingly nearby and  shouted, \"It bites!\" That made him frightened, and the brothers found  that great fun. In the evening they put one of these fiendish trout  in an old wooden bucket right beside his bed. He thought the devil  himself was in that pail. That night when he tried to sneak  downstairs in mortal terror to take refuge with his foster mother,  they cried, \"The trout will jump out of the pail and bite you!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"They're just making it up,\" said the housekeeper, Karítas, the  mother of the farm girl, Kristjána.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the boy did not know whom to believe. You see, he could not be  sure about anything these two women told him. They had very  protruding eyes. Once he forgot himself when he had been sent to  fetch a pony; he had been thinking about God and watching two birds  paddling around on the foreshore. Needless to say he was thrashed for  shirking. But while his foster mother was bringing out the birch from  under her pillow, the widow Karítas felt constrained to say, \"Serves  him right, the lazy little so-and-so!\" And young Kristjána added,  \"Yes, he's always shirking!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut when he was thrashed he was never smacked very hard, only just a  little because God's justice is inescapable: God punishes all those  who shirk. When the thrashing was over, he pulled up his trousers and  wiped away his tears and sniffed. His foster mother went downstairs  to see to the evening meal. Then the widow Karítas came over and  patted his cheek and said, \"Pooh, God doesn't care at all, you poor  wretch--as if He had time to bother about that!\" Young Kristjána  groped inside her bodice and brought out a warm piece of half-melted  brown-sugar candy she had pilfered from the larder that morning:  \"Crunch it up quickly and swallow it down at once, and I'll kill you  if you tell anyone!\" That was how kind and good and affectionate they  could be because they had seen him being thrashed; and when they were kind to him, he did not think their eyes protruded much after all.  They were never very unkind to him when there was no one else present.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMagnína, the daughter of the house, taught him to read from a  tattered old spelling book they had there. She loomed over him like a  mound and pointed at the letters with a knitting needle. She cuffed  him on the ear if he got the same letter wrong thrice, but never hard  and never in anger, almost absentmindedly, and it did not worry him.  She was stout and solid and blue in the face, and the dog sneezed  whenever he sniffed at her. She wore two pairs of enormously thick  stockings because her feet were always cold; the outer stockings were  always hanging down and the inner stockings were sometimes hanging  down, too. She never teased him for fun and never told lies about him  to get him into trouble; she never picked on him when she was in a  bad temper, and she never wished him down into the bad place. But she  never came to his rescue when he was being teased or when he was  being beaten without just cause; she never took his side when lies  were told about him, and she was never cheerful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the other hand there were times when she would do him a kindness  quite without thinking. There was boiled salt fish for the midday  meal, and in the evening there was hash and pickled tripe with pieces  of sheep's lung thrown in; sometimes the evening meal was only  pickled tripe and milk. But the days were very long and the sea and  the sky were gray and dull, and it was snowing on the mountain on the  other side of the fjord, and she would be alone in the loft with the  boy, and it seemed as if life would never end and never get any  better. Then she would slip down to the larder and find herself a  slice of rolled tripe or a piece of pickled brisket or some pickled  lamb fries. The boy slavered on to the spelling book and she cuffed  him on the ear and told him to stop spitting on the book. Then she  would give him a piece of the brisket, right out of the blue, without  any show of affection, as if nothing could be more natural. And his  mouth and his throat and his whole body would feel wonderful for a  while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen he was eight years old he had read the book of Icelandic  Folktales, and Bishop Peter's Short Stories, and St. Luke's Gospel,  which made him cry because Jesus was so alone in the world. On the  other hand he could never get used to thinking of Vídalín's Book of  Sermons* as a book at all. He had a great longing to read more but  there were no other books there except one, The Felsenburg Stories,*  which Magnína had inherited from her father. No one else was allowed  to read that book; it was a secret book. He had a great longing to  read The Felsenburg Stories and all the books in the world--except  the Book of Sermons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"If you mention The Felsenburg Stories once again, I'll thrash you!\"  said Magnína.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEarly on, he had come to suspect that in books in general, but  especially in The Felsenburg Stories, was to be found that  indefinable solace he yearned for but could not name. Magnína wrote  out the alphabet for him, but only once; she had no time for more  because it took her so long to form each letter. In any case there  was no paper, and even when there was, no one was allowed to waste  it. He would furtively scratch letters with a stick on bare patches  of earth or in the snow, but he was forbidden to do that and was told  he was writing himself to the devil. So he had to write on his soul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKamarilla, the housewife, was the implacable enemy of literature.  When it became apparent that the boy had an unnatural desire to pore  over letters, she told him the cautionary story of G. Grímsson of  Grunnavík.* He did not call himself \"Gudmundur Grímsson\" as other  people would; he used only an initial and added a place-name, to  imitate the gentry. It was a dreadful story. G. Grímsson of Grunnavík  was a good-for-nothing poet and wrote a hundred books. He was a bad  man. When he was young he would not get married, but had thirty  children instead. He hated people, and wrote about them. He had  written a host of books about innocent people who had never done him  any harm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No one would have anything to do with a person like that, except the  ugly crones he brought upon himself in his old age. In their old age,  people get what they bring upon themselves. That's what comes of  thinking about books. Yes, I knew him well in his time, that  Gudmundur, always poring over his books, never tried to earn a living  for himself or for others. He was a terrible scoundrel. I was just a  snotty little girl at the time. He lived all by himself in a hovel on  the other side of the mountains, beside another fjord, and God  punished him with a leaky roof and various other things. That showed  him how much good it did him. He sat in an oilskin in the living room  and the rain dripped onto his bald head because he wouldn't earn a  living for himself and for others, drop after drop trickling down his  neck because he was always poring over his books. God was punishing  him. But his heart was hardened and knew no humility, and he went on  writing a hundred books by the feeble glimmer of an oil lamp, two  hundred books. And when he dies it's obvious enough where he'll go,  because God doesn't like having books written about people; only God  has the right to judge people. Besides which, God himself has written  the Bible, which contains everything that needs to be written. Those  who think about other books sit alone and destitute by a guttering  light in their old age, and fiends and devils afflict them.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the story had quite the opposite effect to what was intended.  Instead of acting on the boy as an edifying parable, it beckoned him  irresistibly to something forbidden and alluring; his imagination  dwelt on books with redoubled eagerness after hearing about the  punishment of this lonely sage and his hundred books. Often the boy  was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable yearning to write down in a  hundred books everything he saw, despite what anyone said--two  hundred books as thick as the Book of Sermons, whole Bibles, whole  chests full of books.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis name was Ólafur Kárason, usually shortened to Óli or Lafi. He was  standing by the bay. There were oyster catchers and purple sandpipers  there, too, which scampered a few steps up the beach before the  incoming wave whose foam swirled around their slender legs as it  broke and soughed back again. He always wore the cast-off clothing of  the brothers, who were big men. The seat of his trousers reached down  to the backs of his knees and each trouser leg was rolled up at least  ten times; the arms of his jersey reached a long way beyond his  fingers, and he was always having to roll up the sleeves. He had a  green felt hat which had been a Sunday-best hat in its youth before  the rats got at it; it came well down over his ears, and the brim  rested on his shoulders. He decided to call himself \"Ó. Kárason of  Ljósavík.\" He addressed himself by this name, and talked a lot to  himself. \"Ó. Kárason of Ljósavík, there you stand!\" he said. Yes,  there he stood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis foster mother was rummaging in the lumber box one day for  something she had lost, with the boy behind her, when out of the  rubbish came the remains of a tattered old book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Can I have it?\" asked Ó. Kárason of Ljósavík.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Certainly not!\" said Kamarilla. \"The very idea!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut even so he managed to get hold of the book without his foster  mother's knowledge, and he stuck it under his jersey and kept it at  his breast, close to his heart. He tried to read it in secret, but it  was printed in Gothic lettering and the title page was missing. Every  time he thought he was beginning to understand the book someone would  come along and he would have to hide it hastily under his jersey  again; he was often very close to being caught. What could there be  in his book? He kept his own book against his own heart, and did not  know what was in it. He was determined to keep it until he grew up.  But then pages began to drop out of it here and there, and it became  more and more difficult to read the longer he kept it hidden next to  his bare skin. It was as if the book had been dipped into a pot of  fat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was often an itch at his heart because of the book, but that  did not matter. It was a secret to own such a book; it was really a  kind of refuge, even though he had no idea what was in the book. He  was sure it was a good book, and it is fun having a secret if it is  not anything wicked--one has plenty to think about all day, and one  dreams about it at night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut on the first day of summer the secret was discovered. Kamarilla  the housewife made him change his underclothes after the winter; this  ceremony took place up in the loft in the middle of the day, and he  was taken unawares by it. He peeled off his clothes one by one, and  his heart beat furiously; finally he took off his shirt. There was no  way of hiding the book any longer. It fell to the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"My goodness me!\" said his foster mother. \"God have mercy on me; what  the devil's the child got under his shirt? Magnína, come and see this  dreadful sight!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe boy stood before them, stark naked and anguished, while the two  women examined the book carefully.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Who gave you this book?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I sort of just f-found it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes, it's just as I thought. Not enough to be going around with a  book, but a stolen one at that! Magnína, put this devilish thing in  the fire at once!\"","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303192482021,"sku":"NP9780375727573","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375727573.jpg?v=1767744546","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/world-light-isbn-9780375727573","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}