Halldór Laxness - 1940s

1940s

Laxness translated Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms into Icelandic in 1941, with controversial neologisms.

Laxness published the sprawling three-part Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell, 1943–46) a historical novel.

In 1946 Independent People was released as a book of the month club selection in the United States, selling over 450,000 copies.

In response to the establishment of a permanent US military base in Keflavík, he wrote the satire Atómstöðin (The Atom Station), an action which, in part, may have caused his blacklisting in the United States.

"The demoralization of the occupation period is described... nowhere as dramatically as in Halldor Kiljan Laxness' Atómstöðin (1948)... postwar society in Reykjavik, completely torn from its moorings by the avalanche of foreign gold"

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