A few unusual books coming in the next days to get stuck into during the post-turkey days.  The first is

INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Halldor Laxness - a doorstop book, two inches thick and first published in 1934. It is set in Laxness`s native Iceland and begins at the end of the 19th century.After 18 years of hard work and hard saving, Bjartur has finally paid the deposit on the small and suposedly haunted croft, Summerhouses. He takes his new wife home there and so begins his obsessive struggle to maintain himself and hs family as independent people. To this end and through harsh winters and back-breaking labour, Bjartur sacrifices  two wives and several children, but his sheep survive, building up his worth as a man of independence who asks favours of no one.

It sounds bleak and by the end you do feel you have endured everything the elements can throw at you in a remote Icelandic valley. Bjartur is a cold and cruel tyrant, focusing on his own ambition and you cannot possibly like him but to be like this is probably what it takes to survive as he does in such an evironment.

You feel you have lived there, know the people and the harsh physical life they endure. Whether to be independent is a worthwhile Sole Aim is a question you ask more than once at the end of the book.

It is published in English translation by Harvill, as a paperback.