Holldor Laxness

He’s the only Icelander to win the Nobel Prize. In 1950 I think. He’s just pure genius. He’s written the definitive Icelandic literature. He deals with a lot of the problems the Icelandic people have with self-image, and I think the image most Icelandic people have of Iceland these days is through him. He’s an author big-time - he’s about humanity, love, philosophy, and all his novels are completely different, like 50 of them and every one is a different world, political subjects, everything. He’s The Author, the one we all quote, like English people would with Shakespeare.

Sky 12/95