Description: In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to "read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content," but when Christiane arrives she's shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive. This luminous classic memoir tells the inspiring tale of a woman who found freedom and fulfilment in the adventure of a lifetime.
Review Quotes: "Ritter describes an astonishing land of giant icebergs, gleaming pack ice, powerful storms, shining mountains [and] writes absorbingly about humans' utter subjugation to the elements in this otherworldly place."
--Deb Olin Unferth, The Atlantic
--Maggie Shipstead, author of Great Circle "Like all the best travel writers, Ritter transports readers to the otherworldly landscape she encounters... The 'unimaginable world of splendour and beauty' she describes is enough to make you want to say goodbye to sun loungers in Saint-Tropez, in favour of eking out an existence in a frozen shack in Svalbard."
--Independent, The books we're packing for summer 2025 holidays