A Woman in the Polar Night, Christiane Ritter
A Woman in the Polar Night, Christiane Ritter
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

A Woman in the Polar Night

Author: Christiane Ritter, Sara Wheeler, Jane Degras

Narrator: Rebecca Gallagher

Unabridged: 7 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/20/2024


Synopsis

This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society's expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime.

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 is 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.

At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies . . . But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic's harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for the sanctity of life.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessaka on February 24, 2023

What beautiful writing with a great story, except sometimes she writes about trapping animals for the fur trade, which I am against. Still, she doesn't go into any detail, so if you have the mind to, you can let it go over your head like I had to do. What would cause a woman to want to go live in the......more

Goodreads review by Puck on January 25, 2020

I didn’t expect January to bring me a 5-star read, and I certainly didn’t expect to find it in the Arctic. Yet A Woman in the Polar Night enchanted me completely, giving me shivers and taking my breath away. When her husband asks Christiane to join him for a year in Spitsbergen, Ritter imagines many......more

Goodreads review by Anete on January 14, 2025

Gadiem sekoju Cecilijas Blohmdal, dāma, kas šobrīd dzīvo Svālbārdā ar savu puisi un suni, vlogam, tāpēc, kad Grāmatu klubā dzirdēju par grāmatu, kur aprakstīta sievietes dzīve Svālbārdā pirms 90 gadiem, nebiju grūti pierunājama lasīt šo gabalu. Vajadzēja tikai sagaidīt ziemu. Secinājums viens - dzīv......more

Goodreads review by Matthew Ted on February 03, 2025

Interesting and enjoyable enough, a bit like the non-Moomin Jansson stuff; but even for 200 pages, it grows repetitive. You really have to worry about vitamins when you're out in the polar night.......more