Land of the Snow Men

By Norman Lock and George Belden

Fiction. LAND OF THE SNOW MEN is a collection of visionary stories and renderings taken from the journals of the enigmatic George Belden, who claimed to be on the tragic expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott to reach the South Pole in 1910 through 1912. Norman Lock discovered Belden and his remarkable journal by accident. He had been for some years in Africa, writing a novel, A History of the Imagination. The strain of living in a country as alien as Africa, with little money and little hope of finding a publisher, caused him to have a nervous breakdown. A friend in Mombassa contacted his wife, who arranged for his return and commitment to a private sanitarium in Vermont's Green Mountains. During the final weeks of Lock's recuperation, the institution's chief of staff asked if he would sort through boxes of old files in the sanitarium's basement to determine whether or not any should be kept. In one of those boxes, Lock found LAND OF THE SNOW MEN.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0977072312
• ISBN13: 9780977072316
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Calamari Press
• Length: 86 Pages

Customer Reviews

Beautifully Written, Chillingly Horrifying

I bought this book in the West Village because I was entranced with the title and the first few pages. Once I started reading it I found myself caught in the same type of web that the narrator finds himself in, descending slowly into madness. It was absolutely terrifying to read, and reminded me strongly of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - the only other novel to scare me so strongly. This tale is somewhat akin to the short story, 'The Ice Man' by Haruki Murakami, which is shorter, more poetical, and as sad but far less terrifying. I was sad that this book didn't tell me anything about the author...he's worth reading.