NJAL'S SAGA

Njal's Saga is the finest of Icelandic sagas, and one of the world's great prose works. Written in about 1280, about events a couple of centuries earlier, it is divided into three parts: the first recounts the touching friendship between the noble Gunnar and the statesman Njal, together with the fatal enmity of their wives. The second part works out the central tragedy of the saga, while the third describes the retribution wrought by Flosi and Kari. The saga is remarkable not only for the details of everyday life - the farming, the feasting and the charcoal-burning - but also for the social structures of the society in which that life took place - the Althing or Parliament, the lawmaking and the lawgiving. 384pp. Paperback.