Books - Islandia

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Islandia is a 1942 novel written as a hobby over a long period of time by Austin Tappan Wright. It was posthumously tidied-up and published eleven years after the author's death in 1931.

The setting of the novel is Islandia, an imaginary country, that exists in contemporary times. This remote nation "at the tip of the Karain semi-continent" is near "the unexplored wastes of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere."¹ The citizens have imposed "the Hundred Law, limiting access to Islandia to a bare one hundred visitors at a time."² These two factors have shrouded this nation in mystery.

The book deals with an American named John Lang who visits Islandia and learns its language and culture, and finds romance along the way. Among his other discoveries, he finds that the Islandians use three words for love:

alia: roughly love of place and lineage,
ania: desire for marriage and commitment, and
apia: sexual attraction

Islandia's culture has many "progressive" features. For example, prostitutes are rehabilitated back into acceptable society. Another "progressive" feature is the citizens' love of nature, and their rural lives. Everyone, including members of the upper classes, engages in some kind of useful work, especially farming. The word for city in Islandian literally means "a place where people get together," not where people live; all families have a country home that they can return to.

This fully realized world has drawn parallels to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, but it contains no elements of standard fantasy fare such as dragons, wizards, magic and so on, and is much more like a utopia.

The original Islandia was conceived by Wright as a small boy. Creating its civilization became his lifelong leisure occupation. The complete Islandia papers include "a detailed history ... complete with geography, genealogy, representations from its literature, language and culture."³

There are also three sequels, all written by Mark Saxton, the same man who 'tidied up' the original Islandia manuscript. All three of these were written with the permission of Wright's estate.

The first is called The Islar, Islandia Today - A Narrative of Lang III and is set in then-modern times in 1969. The plot concerns a coup attempt in Islandia that takes place while the national government is debating whether to join the United Nations.

The second, written in 1979, is a prequel called The Two Kingdoms, and concerns the events surrounding the reign of the only female leader in Islandian history, and the dynastic change that ensued from this.

The third sequel, written in 1982, is yet another prequel, set during the days of "The League" when the Roman Catholic Church attempted to overthrow the government of Islandia, failed, and was itself expelled from the country forever. The executrix of the Wright estate died shortly after this book was completed, and there have been no sequels since then.

Reviewers describe these books as entertaining and self-contained. The prequels concern events that are mentioned in passing in the original Islandia novel, and evidently are based on Wright's unpublished notes.

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Books - Islandia

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