[The Atom Station] deals with Iceland's entry into the atomic age and its introduction to the accompanying anxiety and despair, as Parliament debates whether or not to sell the country to other nations for use as an "atom station." Ugla, a strapping, honest-minded girl from the north, comes to Reykjavik to study organ, working as a maid in a Parliament member's home. Symbolizing the heathenish, uncorrupted Iceland of the Sagas, Ugla is appalled by and pitying of the spiritual poverty and boredom of her employers and their kids…. Sometimes the symbolism is full of clichés, but Laxness nevertheless offers insight into a culture that is both isolated from and inexorably tied to the world as a whole. A serious novel in which black humor and shy humanism relieve some of the mordancy.

"Fiction: 'The Atom Station'," in Publishers Weekly (reprinted from the May 28, 1982, issue of Publishers Weekly...