Selected Literary and/or Historical Fiction |
| Year | Title | Author | Comment |
|---|
| 1838 |
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket |
Edgar Allen Poe |
gothic sea novel follows boy who stows away on whaling ship |
| 1864 |
The English at the North Pole |
Jules Verne |
also known as The Purchase at the North Pole |
| 1885 |
Revi-Lona |
Frank Cowan |
all-female society in Antarctica |
| 1897 |
An Antarctic Mystery: The Sphinx of the Ice Fields |
Jules Verne |
sequel to Poe |
| 1927 |
The light from Sealonia |
Arthur Barker |
Arctic civilizations, "one good - populated by religious green-eyed blotchy
people, one bad - populated by dark & lovely alcoholic hedonists" |
|
| 1970 |
The Survivor |
Thomas Keneally |
professor recalls surviving an earlier doomed Antarctic trip |
| 1970 |
Cape of Storms |
John Gordon Davis |
A story of the last of the whaling fleets in Antarctica |
| 1976 |
The Race: A Novel of Polar Exploration |
Kare Holt |
 trans from Norwegian, really interesting version of the race to South Pole |
| 1978 |
Victim of the Aurora |
Thomas Keneally |
historical murder mystery on a British South Pole expedition in
1909. Villainous Victim is a stereotyped predatory, untrustworthy, conniving homosexual
man
 |
| 1982 |
Sur | Ursula LeGuin |
Fabulous short story from the New Yorker about women sledding to South Pole. Nominated for a Hugo.
Collected in LeGuin "The Compass
Rose", 1982, and in Wiegman & Glasberg "Literature and Gender", 1998 |
| 1987 |
More Die of Heartbreak |
Saul Bellow |
not at the
Poles but a major character has worked there. "Its not that you're so asocial,
but a man who likes people doesn't wind up in the Antarctic" |
| 1987 |
The Discovery of Slowness |
Sten Nadolney |
trans. from German (pub 1983), fictionalized biography of Sir
John Franklin
|
| 1991 |
The Terrors of Ice and Darkness |
Christoph Ransmayr |
young Italian obsessed with recreating the Austro-Hungarian polar
expedition of 1872-74 |
| 1992 |
The Broken Lands: A Novel of Arctic Disaster |
Robert Edric |
about Sir John Franklin and the Northwest passage trips |
| 1994 |
The Cage |
Audrey Schulman |
professional nature photographer in Arctic to shoot Polar Bears |
| 1994 |
The Rifles |
William Vollmann |
about Franklin expedition, the forced relocation of Inuit families in the 1950s, and the devastating effects of Western technology on indigenous peoples |
| 1995 |
The Birthday Boys |
Beryl Bainbridge |
fictional account of Scott's expedition to South Pole |
| 1995 |
Antarctic Navigation |
Elizabeth Arthur |
obsessed heroine wants to recreate voyage of RF Scott |
| 1995 |
Heroes and Lovers: An Antarctic Obsession |
Lucy Kavaler |
suffragette marches to South Pole, to best her manly but sexist lover. Historical romantic fiction - "Great God this is an awful book",
could be the "Worst Antarctic Novel in
the World", etc |
| 1995 |
A Discovery of Strangers |
Rudy Wiebe |
fictional account of Franklin's overland expedition to Arctic Ocean |
| 1997 |
Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition |
Caroline Alexander |
"Journal" of Shakleton's cat |
| 1999 |
Voyage of the Narwhal |
Andrea Barrett |
voyage to the arctic in search of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition |
| 1999 |
The Ice Master |
James Houston |
novel of 1875 whaling expedition to the Arctic |
| 1999 |
The Nanny and the Iceberg |
Ariel Dorfman |
sex, Chilean politics, and an Antarctic iceberg brought to
the Sevilla World Expo for the Chilean Pavilion (Chilean author writing
in English) |
| 2000 |
North With Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames |
John Wilson |
fictionalized account of Franklin expedition |
| 2000 |
The Merry Widow |
Meagan McKinney |
historical romance, woman pretends to be widow of Arctic explorer from Franklin
expedition |
| 2001 |
The Grotto Berg |
Charles Neider |
novella about nature photographer in Antarctica |
| 2001 |
The White |
Adrian Caesar |
novel about Scott and Mawson |
| 2001 |
The Ice Child |
Elizabeth McGregor |
London journalist looks for archaeologist who has disappeared
while researching the Franklin expedition |
| 2001 |
May Be Some Time |
Brenda Clough |
future time traveling doctors rescue Titus Oates' body from Antarctica; short story in
Analog; Apr 2001 |
| 2002 |
Tiptoe, on a Fence Post |
Brenda Clough |
sequel to above; Analog Jul 2002 |
| 2002 |
The Seal Wife |
Kathryn Harrison |
young scientist isolated at weather observatory in early
20c Alaska has affair with native |
| 2002 |
Polar |
T. R. Pearson |
in a small Virginia town,
a shiftless character suddenly calls himself Titus and mutters about
Antarctica |
| 2002 |
The Navigator of New York |
Wayne Johnston |
historical novel about a young Newfie explorer, and the Cook
and Peary race to the North Pole |
| 2003 |
One Day the Ice Will Reveal All its Dead |
Claire Dudman |
about Alfred Wegener |
| 2003 |
The Rope Eater |
Ben Jones |
young man joins arctic sailing expedition in 1860s |
| 2003 |
White |
Marie Darrieussecq |
French, Eng trans. pub. in 2006, set in Antarctic research base |
| 2004 |
North |
Donna Jo Napoli |
Young Adult, boy runs away to follow Matthew Henson's trek to the North Pole |
| 2004 |
Colder than Ice |
Helen Macpherson |
Australian
archaeologist & American psychologist find remains of the first Antarctic
exploration team.
|
| 2005 |
A Dream in Polar Fog |
Yuri Rytkheu |
trans from Russian, set in 1910, an arctic sailor lives among
the Chukchi people or northeastern Siberia. Orig pub. in 1968 |
| 2006 |
The Brief History of the Dead |
Kevin Brockmeier |
Coca-cola employee Laura Byrd - in Antarctica to bottle the melting ice- may
be the last survivor of a deadly virus on Earth |
| 2006 |
Degrees of Separation |
Laurence Fearnley |
composer, young woman, and skua scientist
reflect on their time in Antarctica; (New Zealand writer from Artists to
Antarctica program) |
| 2006 |
The Terror |
Dan Simmons |
historical gothic about Sir John Franklin |
| 2006 |
Afterlands |
Steven Heighton |
historical novel about Polaris survivors |
| 2006 |
The White Darkness |
Geraldine McCaughrean
|
Young Adult. In Antarctica with her crazy `Uncle Victor',
who wants to deposit her into Symmes hole, a 14 yr old girl has imaginary
conversations with Titus Oates (an unfortunate choice given the recent
claim that Oates impregnated an 11 year old girl before going to Antarctica).
|
| 2006 |
Voyage Along the Horizon: A Novel |
Javier Marias
|
trans. from Spanish; Story about a 1900 voyage
to Antarctica with scientists, writers, and artists. Supposed to be a parody
of 19th C novels. They never get anywhere NEAR Antarctica. |
| 2006 |
Moj of the Antarctic |
Mojisola Adebayo |
stage
play performed in England; African American slave woman
escapes from slavery, eventually gets to Antarctica.
More
here and here
|
| 2007 |
The Solitude of Thomas Cave |
Georgina Harding |
17th century English whaler winters alone in Greenland |
| 2007 |
The Yiddish Policeman's Union |
Michael Chabon
|
murder mystery/alternate history where 2 million refugee Jews of Europe
become the "frozen Chosen", temporarily, in Sitka Alaska |