Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

World Light

Magnus Magnusson

4.1/5 ( ratings)

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. 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.
As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane 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-World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing of environments, and even the most unpromising human vessel.

Language: English

Pages: 624

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Vintage

Release: October 08, 2002

ISBN: 0375727574

ISBN 13: 9780375727573

World Light

Magnus Magnusson

4.1/5 ( ratings)

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. 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.
As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane 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-World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing of environments, and even the most unpromising human vessel.

Language: English

Pages: 624

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Vintage

Release: October 08, 2002

ISBN: 0375727574

ISBN 13: 9780375727573

More books from Magnus Magnusson

The Fish Can Sing

3.8/5 ( ratings)

King Harald's Saga

The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Paradise Reclaimed

3.7/5 ( ratings)

The Icelandic Sagas I

4.4/5 ( ratings)

Icelandic Folktales and Legends

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Iceland Saga

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?