Safe Return Doubtful

by Christopher Ransmayr           **** (4/5 stars)

Three linked stories of exploration intertwine here as an unidentified narrator researches the disappearance in 1981 of Josef Mazzini, whose obsession with the Austrian explorer Julius Von Payer had brought him to the settlement of Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen island, in the Arctic. Payer, a sub-lieutenant in the Austrian army, having adventured and explored in the Tyrolean Alps in the 1860s, making more than 60 ascents, including several first ascents, led the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition in 1872, which was both Manzinni and the narrator’s interest. This was an attempt at the Pole, via the North-East Passage (along the Norwegian and Siberian coasts), and during the journey he discovered Franz Joseph Land.
Much of the narrative is made up of quotations from the official log of the expedition, and the diaries of individual crew members. It’s only the invented character of Mazzini that makes Ransmayr’s book a novel. The vivid descriptions of the Arctic, and the use of the archives, makes this read as a historical document would.
It’s a fascinating tale of Polar exploration that deserves a place with the best, and yet is surprisingly out of print (available at OpenLibrary, archive.org).