The Lit List – Ice and Snow

Top 10: wintery reads

A top ten of fiction and non-fiction set in ice and snow – best read by the fire.

1. Burial Rights by Hannah Kent. Set in 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the murder of her lover. Based on real events.
2. The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar (non-fiction). The true story of plucky Brit Maurice Wilson who, with no mountaineering experience and unable to fly, planned to land a De Haviland Moth plane at Everest’s base camp and thence to ascent its summit.
3. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Atmospheric ghost story. Something walks there in the dark…
4. The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller. A tale of life at the outer reaches of civilisation, peopled by characters who, for various reasons, do not fit societal norms. Despite the characters’ self-inflicted withdrawal from society, the outside world insists on interrupting their isolation.
5. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (non-fiction). Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, recounted by the youngest member of his team, with a keen eye for nature.
6. A Woman in the Polar Night by Christine Ritter (memoir). Artist Christine Ritter’s experience of the frozen wilderness.
7. The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea. A young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and superstitious locals.
8. Ice Man by Haruki Murakami (short story). Read it here. A woman falls for an ice man.
9. The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. (children’s fiction) Kai is taken by the Snow Queen who lives in a world of ice and snow, but faithful Gerda is determined to find him and restore her friend to the boy she knows and loves. 
10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by anonymous. At the court of King Arthur, the winter festivities are disrupted by the arrival of a spectral green knight. 

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