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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.
'Spectacular... Extraordinary... A deeply affecting book, a memoir so erudite and so wise it's a mystery why it's been out of print in English for half a century' - New European Review 'Conjures the rasp of the ski runner, the scent of burning blubber and the rippling iridescence of the Northern Lights' - Sara Wheeler, author of 'Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica' 'Astonishing, haunting... as much an exploration of the human psyche as it is a journey into one of the bleakest, most challenging and magical environments on earth' - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding: The Return to Nature of a British Farm 'Should you be the sort of person who likes to match their reading to the weather, or current Sunday night telly, you couldn't do better than this... The details of life there, then are fascinating and she's a wonderful nature writer too. It's deeply cosy all round' - Alexandra Heminsley, author of Running Like a Girl 'Extraordinary... It's a radical, feminist text that speaks to the disconnection from the rest of nature we are experiencing at unprecedented levels today. It's hard to believe it was written over 80 years ago' - Lucy Jones
