Dimensions
155 x 233 x 33mm
It's the early 1930s. Antarctic open-sea whaling is booming and new commercial giant Unilever has a stranglehold on the industry. The territorial race for Antarctica is also in full swing, with Sir Douglas Mawson voyaging on Discovery to reinforce British-Australian interests and pre-empt Norwegian claims. Amelia Earhart is blazing a trail (on land and in the air) for intrepid women, but although women have been applying to join Antarctic expeditions for more than 20 years, none have been accepted.
Against this backdrop, the resupply vessel Thorshavn sets sail from Cape Town, carrying the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen and fuel for his fleet of factory ships, which are hunting whales through the uncharted wild waters of the Southern Ocean to the very edge of the Antarctic ice.
On board are three women: Lillemor Rachlew, who tricked her way on to the ship and will stop at nothing to be the first woman to land on Antarctica; Mathilde Wegger, a grieving widow who's been forced to join the trip by her calculating parents-in-law; and Lars's wife, Ingrid Christensen, who has longed to travel to Antarctica since she was a girl and has made a bargain with Lars to convince him to take her - that she will try to conceive a child on the journey.
The explorer Captain Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, along with his team of huskies, is catching a lift with Thorshavn to carry out further exploration and claim Antarctic territory for Norway. Historian Hans Bogen is included in the party to record new discoveries after another historian was rejected because of his concerns about whaling. The ship's captain, Horntvedt, is a conservative who disapproves of women being brought on the voyage at all. Also making the journey is the Lockheed Vega plane Qarrtsiluni, named after the Inuit word for 'soul of a whale'.
Loyalties shift and melt and conflicts increase as they pass through the Southern Ocean and reach the whaling grounds. None of the women are prepared for the reality of meeting the whaling fleet and experiencing firsthand the hunting of whales and the operations of the factory ships. While Lillemor and Lars try their hand at hunting whales and Mathilde is openly revolted by the process, Ingrid begins to feel an affinity with the creatures they are hunting - an affinity with dangerous consequences.
As they head for the continent itself, the race is on for the first woman to land on Antarctica. None of them expect the outcome and none of them know how they will be changed by their arrival.
