Salka Valka

This is a remarkable achievement and will hopefully lead to a revival of interest in an oft-overlooked literary genius. – Publishers Weekly starred review A fresh translation of Nobel Prize–winning author Halldór Laxness's modernist masterpiece Salka Valka.. A feminist coming of age tale an elegy to the plight of the working class and the corrosive effects of social and economic inequality and a poetic window into the arrival of modernity in a tiny industrial town Salka Valka is a novel of epic proportions living and breathing with its expansive cast of characters filled with tenderness humor and remarkable pathos.  On a mid-winter night an eleven-year-old Salvör and her unmarried mother Sigurlína disembark at the remote run-down fishing village of Óseyri where life is lived in fish and consists of fish. The two women struggle to make their way amidst the domineering salt-worn men of the town and their unsolicited attention and after Sigurlína's untimely death Salvör pays for her funeral and walks home alone precipitating her coming of age as a daring strong-willed young woman who chops off her hair earns her own wages educates herself through political and philosophical texts and most significantly becomes an advocate for the town's working class ultimately organizing a local chapter of the seamen's union.