Sunday, January 13, 2019

Five top books to explore the Antarctic

Jean McNeil is the author of thirteen books, including six novels and a collection of short fiction, a collection of poetry, a travel guide and literary essays. Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Award for fiction and the Journey Prize for short fiction (Canada).

Her 2016 book Ice Diaries: an Antarctic Memoir, which The New York Times has called 'stunningly written', won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Film Festival Book Competition.

One of McNeil's best books to explore the Antarctic, as shared at the Guardian:
For a long time, Antarctica had only men to kill. Women were barred from the continent, supposedly due to the medical threats of pregnancy and the difficulty of repatriation. Not until the mid-1990s were they allowed to overwinter on British bases. Unlike Sara Wheeler or Gabrielle Walker, who offer perceptive accounts in Terra Incognita and Antarctica, Jenny Diski met a wall of rejection when she tried to travel there as an official observer, and took a berth on a cruise ship instead. Her morbid, acidic travelogue, Skating to Antarctica, is a haunting exploration of her inner Antarctic, which reflects this outsider status – all most of us will ever be on this remote continent.
Read another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue