Click here to download the eBook edition of Islandia from Archive.org!
"Islandia occupies the southern portion of the Karain subcontinent, which lies in the Southern Hemisphere. Its people are an agrarian, highly civilized race... Its civilization is an ancient one, protected from outside intervention by a natural fortress of towering mountains. To this isolated country—this alien, compelling, and totally fascinating world comes John Lang, American consul. As the reader lives with Lang in Islandia, as he comes to know this magnetic land, its unique people, its strange customs… he may very well find himself experiencing a feeling of envy: a wish that he, like Lang, be permitted, at the book's end, to return once more and spend the rest of his days in Islandia."
This is an unofficial eBook edition of Islandia, a beautiful, sprawling story of a peaceful, isolated, anti-capitalist utopia in the fictional country. It is written from the perspective of a young American man who finds meaning and belonging in this foreign place.
Written in the 1920s and published in the 1940s, it is surprisingly progressive, and still has plenty to give to the modern reader. Wright creates a detailed, engaging, and believable culture with a rich history the book only begins to touch upon. You can learn more about this book at its Wikipedia entry.
Islandia was published posthumously after much editing and paring down. Even after that, it's still an extremely long book, and an enormous tome that my joints simply can't handle anymore. I converted it to eBook format from a garbled automatic OCR to make it possible for folks like me to experience Islandia, and to preserve its legacy.
Mirror/direct download links:
MOBI
EPUB
AZW3
ODT (for editing, copying, etc.)
DOCX (for editing, copying, etc.)