[Halldor Laxness] never acquired the audience in the United States that his unusual and fine talent deserved. The life in Iceland that he portrayed may have been too stark and remote for American tastes. Now that in Paradise Reclaimed [Paradísarheimt] … his story moves from Iceland to Utah, he ought to be able to capture a few more readers.

Mist-shrouded Iceland and the desert flats of Utah seem to be spots as unrelated as any two you could pick on this globe; Mr. Laxness ties them together by the common dream of a real earthly paradise that circulated among Icelanders and Mormons in the nineteenth century. His hero, a small farmer named Steinar Steinsson, is persuaded by a Mormon missionary in Iceland to make the long pilgrimage to the land of the Latter-Day Saints…. At the end we see him revisiting Iceland, gazing at the ruins of his...