California Treason: Halldór Laxness and Upton Sinclair

Abstract

ABSTRACT Years before he attained international acclaim, the Icelandic author Halldór Laxness spent almost three years in the United States; however, few scholars in American studies have delved into Laxness’s pivotal experience in California or his consequential literary encounter with Upton Sinclair. Using American and Icelandic sources, this article maps Laxness’s travels through a transnational California culminating in an incident of political suppression that reveals the risks of radicalism during the 1920s. Foregrounding how Laxness confronted economic inequality and disparaged nativist patterns in American society through his book Alþýðubókin, a collection of essays published in 1929, this article also situates Laxness’s work in a broader tradition of left-wing dissent, while also revealing the influence of the muckraking style on Laxness’s politics and prose.