Islandia

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 labor of love Wright's wife and daughter culled 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.


Genre: Science Fiction

"Reading ISLANDIA is like visiting another country, one I would love to visit and might even consider living in. The world-building of Austin Tappan Wright drew me in and kept me entranced for 1000 pages. This is one of the very few novels that I revisit and reread, one of the few I've gone out looking for in a first edition. The characters are complex and endearing. The style is leisurely. There really is a plot, honest. But the book doesn't depend on the plot. It depends on the exploration of a different society and the interactions of its people with a young and naive American." - Vonda N McIntyre