Anti-American Wins Nobel Prize
Laxness & Svarti listinn
The Nobel literature prize winner Halldór Kiljan Laxness was born in 1902 in Iceland’s capital but grew up in the country. From the age of seventeen he travelled and lived abroad, chiefly on the European continent. In the mid-twenties Laxness converted to Catholicism, but his religious period did not last; during a visit to the United States he became attracted to socialism. He got into trouble with the Icelandic authorities and was also blacklisted in the US, despite critical and commercial success.