Islandia is like no novel ever before written or published. Literally the work of a lifetime, it is a story of great adventure, far travel, and true wisdom, of a deeply felt love story, and above all of the growth of a man. In Islandia Austin Tappen Wright has created a continent, peopled it with its own races, and proved its existence. Islandia is no Utopia; it is a country with its own history, its towns, cities, and streets, its rivers and mountains, its language, politics, law, and customs, its virtues and its faults. John Lang, then a very proper young American, met the first Islandian he had ever seen at Harvard University. The Islandian's name was Dorn, just Dorn. Lang's acquaintance with him rapidly became friendship and the friendship led indirectly to Lang's appointment as the first American Consul to Islandia. Lang made the long journey into the Southern Hemisphere, and he found in Islandia a civilization new and strange to him, but older than his own. As Consul he made certain decisions, dangerous ones--decisions that played a part in the defiance Islandia threw at the world, that led Lang himself to the fight at the Vaba Pass and forced on him the great choice of his life. Important in everything Lang did, influencing all his thoughts and desires were the three women he loved -- Dorna, his friend's sister, who taught him many things very painfully--Nattana with the red-gold hair and the skillful hands--and Gladys Hunter, an American like himself. And always, pervading everything, is Islandia with its sounds and smells, its forests and its snow mountains, exciting, mysterious, and yet increasingly familiar. (from the dust jacket flaps of the First Edition) Also see "An Introduction to Islandia" by Basil Davenport which was issued around the same time as the first edition of this book.