The Sagas of Icelanders: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world's great literary treasures - as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 03/01/2001
Pages: 848
Weight: 1.96lbs
Size: 8.44h x 5.70w x 2.23d
ISBN: 9780141000039
Age: Young Adult


Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 12/20/2001 pg. 32
New York Review of Books 05/23/2002 pg. 59

About the Author
Jane Smiley's ten works of fiction include The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, Ordinary Love and Good Will, Moo, A Thousand Acres (which won the Pulitzer Prize), and most recently the bestselling Horse Heaven.