Description

‘Conjures the rasp of the ski runner, the scent of burning blubber and the rippling iridescence of the Northern Lights’ Sara Wheeler

‘[An] astonishing, haunting memoir’ Isabella Tree

The rediscovered classic memoir – the mesmerizingly beautiful account of one woman’s year spent living in a remote hut in the Arctic

In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable home for a year with her husband on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen. On arrival she is shocked to realise that 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 and the lack of supplies… But after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic’s harsh, otherworldly beauty.

This luminous classic memoir tells of her inspiring journey to freedom and fulfilment in the adventure of a lifetime.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe

Translated by Jane Degras

With a foreword by Sara Wheeler

Born in 1897, CHRISTIANE RITTER was an Austrian artist and author. She wrote A Woman in the Polar Night on her return to Austria from Spitsbergen in 1934. It has since become a classic of travel writing, never going out of print in German and being translated into seven other languages. ‘A year in the Arctic should be compulsory to everyone,’ she would say in her later years. ‘Then you will come to realise what’s important in life and what isn’t.’ Ritter died in Vienna in 2000 at the age of 103.

Publisher Review

"An epic story, elegantly told and full of mystery. Even though I could never hope to match her bravery and aplomb, Ritter made me long to decamp at once for the harshest and wildest corners of the earth." - Maggie Shipstead, author of Great Circle