Historical Fiction · ThoughtfulOne novella and seven stories about scientists and the people close to them, from 1764 to 1971
Ship Fever and Other Stories
Stories of naturalists, scientists and their families across two centuries
Ship Fever collects one novella and seven stories, all about science and the people who work in it. In one, a geneticist's wife watches her husband's work while the ghost of Gregor Mendel haunts him. In another, a zoologist finds consolation in Darwin's theory of evolution during personal hardship. Two Englishwomen in 1764 secretly test whether swallows hibernate underwater, against the belief of Linnaeus.
More about this book
Who
Scientists and naturalists, among them geneticists, zoologists and Linnaeus, and the people around them.
World
Stories set between 1764 and 1971.
What makes it different
Science is at the center of every story. Barrett began writing fiction seriously in her thirties and was little known before this book, and some of its characters return in her 2007 novel The Air We Breathe.
Feel
Thoughtful and quiet. It won the 1996 National Book Award for Fiction.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Andrea BarrettWikipedia