Independent People is an epic novel by Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, published in 1946. It deals with the struggle of poor Icelandic farmers in the early 20th century, only freed from debt bondage in the last generation, and surviving on an isolated croft in inhospitable countryside. The novel (and author) is considered among the main proponents of social realism in Icelandic fiction in the 1930s. It is an indictment of materialism, the cost of the independent spirit to relationships, and capitalism itself. This book, along with several other major novels, helped Laxness win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.