Independent People is an epic novel by Halldor Laxness, published 1934-35. Its subject is the struggle of poor Icelandic farmers in the early 1900s, only freed from debt bondage in the last generation, and surviving on an isolated croft in inhospitable countryside. --- The novel is an indictment of materialism, the human relationship costs of the "independent spirit", and perhaps capitalism itself. It helped propel Laxness to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1955. --- This classic islandic novel has been translated into Esperanto by Baldur Ragnarsson.