A second translation arrives as an affirmation of enduring value and an implicit admission of shortcoming: We didn’t do you justice the first time around ... Such is the fate of the magnificent Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, whose early novel Salka Valka, first rendered into English in 1936, now sports an able, fresh translation by Philip Roughton that restores some vital passages in the process ... This is a better novel (richer, deeper) than anything else you’re likely to meet this year. Its people are as real as you or me—as are its shorebirds and its blizzards and its dreams and its cows ... This is Laxness’s keenest portrayal of romantic love ... Icelanders have long taken justifiable pride in the centrality of women in Laxness’s fiction. Arguably, his finest creations are female: fanciful girls, disillusioned young women, desperate mothers, maundering but sage old ladies.

[Laxness'] first attempt to integrate his sense of socialism’s liberatory promise into a cohesive artistic vision ... The language of the various worldviews that dominate the village seep subtly into the initially detached narration, inflecting the story with a claustrophobic sense of how ideology shapes perception ... By turns caustic and lyrical, funny and forlorn, Salka Valka is far from a triumphant portrait of the labor movement ... Perhaps the novel is best considered as a meditation on failure: on not living up to one’s ideals or sustaining a movement, as well as the more existential failures behind these strategic ones—the failure of characters to reach beyond the bounds of their selves, to overcome the fundamental loneliness at the core of Laxness’s melancholy vision. This loneliness is the dark undercurrent of Salka Valka, an invisible, inexorable hindrance to meaningful connection and collective action.

Readers who’ve never heard of this fierce, crude, uncompromising, independent, isolated, enterprising, vulnerable daughter of Iceland’s frigid sea and narrow fjords will meet a character who would be as at home at today’s #MeToo rallies as she was nearly a century ago in the tiny village of Óseyr ... Steeped in Iceland’s foundational epics, Laxness uses his villagers like a Greek chorus — not quite individuated but critically important. While their lives are unspeakably hard, their hearts thrum with Iceland’s proud heritage ... In other places, Laxness wields his chorus as an object of humor, and in yet others as unsympathetic, gossipy observers of Salka’s struggle to survive after Sigurlína dies and Steinƥór and Arnaldur compete for her heart ... Doubtless, modern-day feminists will see in Salka an admirable example of female fortitude and resolve. And certainly, she is that. But she’s also much more. She is the ultimate realist, and she applies her clear-eyed vision with equal intensity to the price of fish as to the price love will exact on her heart.

Laxness explores Salka’s inner life and the social and economic circumstances of the village as both change over the course of about 20 years. Her story is long and somber, but Laxness is adept at putting in some amusing observations ... For modern readers, especially those who are aware of what a prosperous and enlightened tourist destination Iceland has become, Salka Valka is a wonderful exposure to Iceland’s troubled past and to the Icelandic sensibility that comes from making the best of things even when there isn’t much to be made. Laxness’s characters are rough and honest, and Salka Valka is one of the most empathetic portraits of a girl and a woman that I’ve read by a male author. This new translation is readable and compelling.

Laxness' novel is a rich portrait of this simple -- and not so simple -- girl and woman, a remarkably stable pole -- and, in many ways, a model -- for and in a changing world ... But Laxness also emphasizes her very human side, not least in her concern for the welfare of children ... Laxness' small-town tale depicts a world where life is difficult, but the novel never sinks into deep gloom; there's a variety of resilient spirit here -- with Salka Valka's particularly pronounced and strong (and really only her mother a truly resigned figure). It's hardly an upbeat tale, but there's a surprising buoyancy to it, with even most of the sadness coming across as an accepted part of life. Of course, there is then that absolutely crushing ending ... Salka Valka is a big and very fine novel, and wonderful character-portrait of a remarkable figure.

One gets the sense that Laxness’s view of a feminist socialist heroine may simply, at this point in his career, have been ‘a woman in pants’—or, in other words, a woman taking on the role of a man ... A contemporary reading of Salka’s discomfort with girlhood makes Laxness seem ahead of his time around issues of sex and gender. Yet, when contextualized with Salka’s work ethic and socialist ideas, the trousers appear to be more of a uniform for an equal society, rather than a nod to queer life ... Part II deals in great detail with the work required to bring a nation like Iceland towards socialism and better living conditions ... In the writing, there is a clear struggle to maintain the balance between storytelling and political discourse—while this makes for an uneven read, Laxness still achieves a certain richness with his sublime and painterly landscapes and earnest portraits of 'insignificant' people living through a significant historical moment. Though Salka Valka is rife with idealism, the author’s homage to resilience and resistance is sometimes overshadowed by his depiction of a relentlessly bleak, impoverished world.

Resonant ... Laxness tackles such tough social themes as abuse, stigma, sexism, and economic inequality ... . Laxness demonstrates a keen eye for details, with lyrical descriptions of the book’s setting ... Laxness also treats his characters with compassion; for example, while Salka’s mother is weak and frequently neglects her daughter, the reader learns enough about her to understand her perspective. This is a remarkable achievement and will hopefully lead to a revival of interest in an oft-overlooked literary genius.