ONE OF THE MASTERWORKS OF THE ANGLOSPHERE:

First and foremost, about Halldór Laxness's Independent People. This Icelandic classic had been on my reading list for almost a decade, but something--its bulk, its ostensible subject (sheep farming), its mythic opening--held me back. Then, this summer, I took a copy to Maine, and as soon as Bjartur of Summerhouses blustered onto the page, the stubbornest hero in all of world literature, I was hooked. As for those sheep: This is a novel about them only in the sense that Lonesome Dove is a novel about cows. And though I love Lonesome Dove, Independent People is much the better book. Laxness's storytelling offers epic sweep and power, but also, in J.A. Thompson's stunning translation, modernist depth and daring, along with humor and beauty and pain to rival Tolstoy. In short, Independent People is one of my favorite novels ever.

I'd like to introduce you to the most maddening person I've ever encountered in my life: Bjartur of Summerhouses.

I've known him for 15 years, and he never fails to infuriate me; he is querulous, contrary, hard-hearted and stubborn.

And yet, I find myself drawn to him again and again.

Please do not let the fact that he is fictitious -- or Icelandic, or an impoverished sheep farmer -- deter you from entering his world, which is brilliantly conjured in the pages of Halldor Laxness' novel Independent People.

When I first opened this book, it was with a feeling of trepidation and a hefty dose of familial obligation. My mother had sent it to me in the mail, accompanied by a note that said "You must read this" -- a phrase that was underlined three times. "It's written by Halldor Laxness," she wrote. "He is one of Our People."

My mother was referring to the Icelanders; her parents' families had fled Iceland for North America in the 1800s after a devastating volcanic eruption, but she still referred to all Icelanders as "Our People."

And that is how I came to encounter the flinty yet endearing Bjartur of Summerhouses, a gritty, practical farmer who composes poetry as he strides through blizzards searching for lost sheep.

As the novel opens, Bjartur -- who spent 18 bitter years as a servant on another man's farm -- is surveying the first thing he has ever owned. It is a dark, dank, turf-roofed farmhouse on a glacial moor, where the family members inhabit one common room upstairs and the sheep, horse, cow and dog occupy the entire first floor.

But this miserable hovel is also Bjartur's palace. The character's sole quest in life -- and one of the novel's great themes -- is to live as an independent man, in debt to no one. It's a desire that comes with a price, especially in a harsh climate where interdependence is the only means of survival; Bjartur's wife, children and neighbors all bear the brunt of his obsession for independence.

If all of this seems too grim, keep reading. One of the great surprises of the novel is the author's deliciously sardonic humor and marvelous grasp of human foibles at all levels of society.

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