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A Woman in the Polar Night
This lesser known memoir in translation is one of MMD team member Chelsey's favorites. Now that it's back in print from Pushkin Press, she widely recommends it every winter. In 1933, Christiane Ritter, an Austrian painter, arrived on the arctic island of Spitsbergen to live with her hunter husband in a tiny little hut. In her vividly detailed diary entries, she used her artistic eye to paint a picture of the barren landscape, its wonders, and its dangers. Introspective yet expansive, this memoir is one of very few 20th century accounts of the arctic tundra by a woman.
About the Book
Publisher’s description:
In 1934, the Austrian painter Christiane Ritter travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen to spend a year with her husband, an explorer and researcher. They are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement. At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies… But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic’s harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for the sanctity of life.
This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society’s expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime.
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