Citadel of Ice

About the Book

In 1916 Captain Melchior von Fuchsheim is abruptly transferred from the horror of the trenches to a remote outpost in the Austrian Alps. There he is assigned to build an incredible fortress beneath the massive Ortler Glacier, where the Austrians are locked in a stalemate against the Italians while battling nature’s cruelest extremes of cold and altitude. But Major Stutz sees Melchior as a charlatan, and a struggle erupts as Melchior fights to defend the Jewish conscripts under his command, deep in the tunnels and caverns of the ‘Eisfestung’, the Citadel of Ice. Based on the true story of the construction of a military base inside a glacier on the Austro-Hungarian front during the First World War, this novel explores the inspiration of Captain Melchior to provide Austrian troops with a safe refuge as they defend the front and try to outwit the Italians in one of the world’s harshest climates. As Melchior supervises the construction of the base, he confronts problems of architecture, temperature, and the mysterious shifting of glacial ice, while grappling with combat, avalanches, frostbite, blizzards and an incompetent commanding officer.

About the Author

Robie Macauley’s career spanned 50 years during which he published fiction, The Disguises of Love (1952), The End of pity and Other Stories (1957), A Secret History of Time to Come (1979) and a popular textbook on writing (Technique in Fiction, 1966), plus over a hundred short stories. He taught literature and writing at Bard College, The University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, The University of North Carolina, Kenyon College, The University of Illinois, Emerson College, and the Harvard Extension. During the final years of his career, he was a Senior Editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company. Cameron Macauley has worked in humanitarian aid and international development since 1984. He has published short fiction in The North American Review, The Sonora Review, Prism International, and Quick Fiction.