From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author: Independent People, set in the early twentieth century, stars an ordinary sheep farmer named Bjartur of Summerhouses whose flinty determination to free himself from servitude is both heroic and terrifyingly bleakly comic. After eighteen years of humiliation, Bjartur seeks to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man, yet his spirited daughter wants her independence from him as well. Their battle of wills is harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece that recalls Iceland’s medieval epics and classics.