Books like Growth of the Soil
Isak, a huge, silent man, walks into the empty Norwegian uplands and clears a farm from nothing, and a woman with a harelip comes to live with him.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Growth of the Soil
The Tree of Man
Stan Parker clears a patch of bush outside Sydney around 1900, brings home his young wife Amy, and the two of them make a farm and a life together over fifty years.
The Peasants
A year in the life of the village of Lipce, autumn to summer, centred on the rich widowed farmer Maciej Boryna, his marriage to the young beauty Jagna and his son Antek's fury.
Independent People
An Icelandic sheep farmer who worked for years to own his own land refuses to bend to anyone, and his family pays for his fierce independence across decades of hardship.
Wanderers
An ageing writer takes to the road as a labourer in rural Norway, working on farms and estates, and falls under the spell of a captain's wife at one of them.
Synnøve Solbakken
In a Norwegian mountain valley, Thorbjørn, a quarrelsome farmer's son, loves Synnøve, the gentle girl of the neighbouring farm, but her pious parents won't hear of a match until he learns to master his temper.
Reeds in the Wind
In a Sardinian village, three ageing sisters of a ruined noble family and their devoted servant Efix, who carries a secret, wait for a nephew from the mainland who might save them.
The Good Earth
A Chinese peasant marries an unloved kitchen slave, and across forty years of drought, revolution, and unexpected wealth they rise and the land goes on telling them what they are.
Kristin Lavransdatter
In fourteenth-century Norway, a farmer's daughter defies her father to marry the charming, reckless knight she loves and lives out the long consequences of that choice.
The Emigrants
In 1850 a group of poor Swedish farmers and outcasts from Småland sell what they own and cross the Atlantic towards the promise of Minnesota land.
Jerusalem
A revival movement splits a farming parish in Dalarna, and a group of villagers sells their ancestral farms to follow its preacher to a religious colony in Jerusalem.
Raised from the Ground
The peasants of a Portuguese estate endure a century of feudal oppression, and Saramago gives voice to the people history usually ignores.
Pan
Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, living alone with his dog in a forest hut in northern Norway one summer, falls for Edvarda, the moody daughter of the local trader, and the two torment each other.