Mills, Magnus–EXPLORERS OF THE NEW CENTURY
Posted in Antarctica, England, Exploration, Literary, 2007-09 on Jun 11th, 2009
In 1998, when his first novel, The Restraint of Beasts was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Magnus Mills suddenly burst upon the literary world—and gave up his job as a London bus driver forever. In the ensuing eight years, he has published four more novels and a book of short stories, establishing a well deserved reputation for witty satire and social commentary. Explorers of the New Century begins with a race between Captain Johns, a British explorer, and Tostig, a Scandinavian, as each tries to become the first man to reach the AFP, or Agreed Furthest Point. Mills creates obvious parallels between this race and the 1911 race for the South Pole between Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Mills’s presentation of the rush to the AFP is fascinating in its own right, but there is a much bigger story here–the real reason the two groups are hurrying to the AFP.
