An idealistic Icelandic farmer journeys to
Mormon Utah and back in search of paradise in
this captivating novel by Nobel Prize winner
Halldor Laxness.The quixotic hero of this
long-lost classic is Steinar of Hlidar, a
generous but very poor man who lives peacefully
on a tiny farm in nineteenth-century Iceland
with his wife and two adoring young children.
But when he impulsively offers his children's
beloved pure-white pony to the visiting King of
Denmark, he sets in motion a chain of disastrous
events that leaves his family in ruins and
himself at the other end of the earth,
optimistically building a home for them among
the devout polygamists in the Promised Land of
Utah. By the time the broken family is reunited,
Laxness has spun his trademark blend of
compassion and comically brutal satire into a
moving and spellbinding enchantment, composed
equally of elements of fable and folkore and of
the most humble truths.