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Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017.
‘Ed O’Loughlin is a skilled cartographer of both the Arctic and the human heart. What a magnificent novel’ Ron Rash
‘A brilliant paean to the obsessions of the polar explorers . . . stupendously good’ Australian
‘Vastly entertaining’ Sunday Times
FROM BOOKER-LONGLISTED ED O’LOUGHLIN: THE PERFECT NOVEL FOR FANS OF AMY SACKVILLE’S THE STILL POINT AND FRANCIS SPUFFORD’S I MAY BE SOME TIME.
It begins with a chance encounter at the top of the world.
Fay Morgan and Nelson Nilsson have each arrived in Inuvik, Canada – 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle – searching for answers about a family member: Nelson for his estranged older brother, Fay for her disappeared grandfather. They soon learn that these two men have an unexpected link – a hidden share in one of the greatest enduring mysteries of polar exploration.
‘Ed O’Loughlin is a skilled cartographer of both the Arctic and the human heart. What a magnificent novel’ Ron Rash
‘A brilliant paean to the obsessions of the polar explorers . . . stupendously good’ Australian
‘Vastly entertaining’ Sunday Times
FROM BOOKER-LONGLISTED ED O’LOUGHLIN: THE PERFECT NOVEL FOR FANS OF AMY SACKVILLE’S THE STILL POINT AND FRANCIS SPUFFORD’S I MAY BE SOME TIME.
It begins with a chance encounter at the top of the world.
Fay Morgan and Nelson Nilsson have each arrived in Inuvik, Canada – 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle – searching for answers about a family member: Nelson for his estranged older brother, Fay for her disappeared grandfather. They soon learn that these two men have an unexpected link – a hidden share in one of the greatest enduring mysteries of polar exploration.
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Reviews
The most exciting first novel I have read in many years.
A simply brilliant debut by an author of great poise and power.
Intensely evocative language.
A graceful writer.
Superb.
Eloquent and thoughtful.
In both concept and execution the novel is a serious piece of work at once vastly entertaining and ambitious.
A compelling and hugely ambitious novel.
The Franklin novel to end all Franklin novels. Never have so many different narrative threads been taken up and twined together.
With each novel, O'Loughlin is expanding his interests and his imaginative grasp - the first sign of a genuinely talented writer. He is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting novelists currently at work.
An imaginative and involving story.
A novel wondrous in its tone and reach . . . the final pages seem inevitable as great endings must, the whole novel wondrous in its tone and reach. The title is from Wallace Stevens poem The Snowman, where we're asked to behold the 'Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.' It takes a good writer to take that on. It takes a great one to succeed.
[A] brilliant paean to the obsessions of the polar explorers . . . stupendously good.
A spellbinding tale of adventures and explorers, spies and outlaws, of derring-do, self-sacrifice and impossible feats of endurance . . . In the sheer brio of its storytelling, it brings to mind Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence or David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas - profound, yes, but terrific fun, too.
Minds of Winter is a remarkable feat of imagination, empathy, and research. Past and present merge to convey the polar landscape's immense mysteries, and the lives of those voyagers compelled to seek answers in its icy expanses. Ed O'Loughlin is a skilled cartographer of both the Arctic and the human heart. What a magnificent novel.