Islandia - Softcover

Wright, Austin Tappan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585678252 ISBN 13: 9781585678259

Publisher: Overlook Press, 2007

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"Unique, brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed." - The New York Times "The product of a modern time. Islandia is vivid chiefly with the desire for complete escape from the actual world. It tries to make that escape so detailed, so palpable, the it will outrealise reality." - Time "Fabulous... there has never been anything like it" - The New Yorker"

Synopsis:

This is the underground classic of utopian fiction re-released for a new audience. On his death, Austin Tappan Wright left the world a wholly unsuspected legacy. Among this distinguished legal scholar's papers were thousands of pages devoted to a staggering feat of literary creation - a detailed history of an imagined country complete with geography, genealogy, representations from its literature, language and culture. In a monumental labour of love Wright's wife and daughter culied from this material a thousand page novel, as detailed as J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. "Islandia" has similarly become a classic touchstone for those concerned with the creation of imaginary worlds. Islandia occupies the southern portion of the Karain Continent, which lies in the Southern Hemisphere. Its civilization is an ancient one, protected from outside intervention by a natural fortress of towering mountains. To this isolated country - this alien, compelling and totally fascinating world - comes John Lang, the American consul.

As the reader lives with Lang in Islandia, as he comes to know this magnetic land, its unique people, its strange customs, he may find himself experiencing a feeling of envy, a wish that he, like Lang, be permitted, at the book's end, to return once more and spend the rest of his days in Islandia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1585678252
• ISBN 13: 9781585678259
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1024