Austin Tappan Wright Books

this is one VERY boring story with a VERY eratic plot
not well written at all. im glad i got it at the
library and did not waste my money. as if love and sex
were not confusing enough this makes it even worse
the only 2 neat things i seen were the map of islandia
and the roots of a artifical language.

I first read this book in 1946 at the age of 19. I read it through in one sitting and came out of the experience speaking Islandan better than English. I found in the book a minor character upon whom I wished to model my behavior and hoped to achieve the same position in my relationships.
Structurally this in not a good novel but then it was never intended to be a novel. The mood of the book parallels the emotions of the protagonist. When he is up--the book is up. When he is going through his disappointment in his thwarted love affair the book drags. When he is doing his "buckling and swashiling" toward the end of the book it is a great book of action. There are too many antclimaxes.
I have re-read this book several times a decade and each time leave it with a deep sense of satisfaction that Austin Wright had this dream and we are allowed to share it.

I read this book 35-40 years ago, lent it to someone, and never got it back. For several years I searched and finally found an old paperback copy. It's great to see that it is being reprinted.
I believe the people who do not like this book either read it at the wrong time in their life (at a time when they are not open to new ideas) or did not understand the times in which it was written (1941). I heartily recommend the book to anyone who wants to think about relationships in a unique way.

In browsing Amazon.com I was delighted to find "Islandia" back in print after years when one could only acquire it in second-hand book stores. That print history is a shame, because the book is among the great Utopian novels of the 20th century. And, as you will note from the remarkable consistency of the comments by earlier reviewers on this site, it has spoken deeply to a good many people.

I first encountered it in a freshman lit course at Dartmouth College in 1967, and I since have read it again twice--and each time it spoke to one's life. Because while in one sense it is a Utopian novel advocating a set of values for the ideal society, it also speaks directly to the choices individuals face in how to live their own lives and in that respect it echoes Henry David Thoreau.

Islandia at the surface level is an adventure/romantic story and a good one, though not without flaws and a few too many emotional twists and turns in its 1000 pages, as it describes the adventures (both in events and romance) of young American John Lang assigned as US consul in the early 20th century to Islandia, a distant and exotic but essentially Western agrarian nation with some very progressive views (esp. at the time Wright was writing the book over 60 years ago) on sexual freedom, female equality, and sensitivity to aesthetics and the environment; yet also with a deep respect for tradition. Wright in creating this society for his novel was trying to transcend modern "left and right" political values to combine some of the best features of both as a prescription for how to create a humane and satisfying society.

But I said the novel was also about individual choice, and ultimately John Lang has to choose between return to the high-stress, high sensory input industrial society from which he came, and a commitment to Islandia as an agrarian culture of deep and rich values but less "motion" in life--a quieter, if in some ways very satisfying, existence. And Wright does not pull punches about the difficulties of the choice. That is a choice many of us face now in the modern world--between a more inner directed life of values and contemplation, or the outward directed life of events and action in a high-stress environment. This book is brilliant in drawing the distinctions, in framing the choice, and I suspect that is one reason why it has appealed so deeply to many of those who have read it.

The greatest underground novel for Americans. Especially appropriate for our times, when American foreign policy is based primarily on military threats or actions, commercial considerations trump concern with protection of the environment, and ignorance of or disdain for other cultures and peoples -- and our own history -- is the national norm.