Last Letters from Hav is a narrative account of the author's six-month visit to the fictional country of Hav. The novel is written in the form of travel literature.[2] It begins with the author being sent to the city on an assignment from the New Gotham Magazine.[3] Hav itself is imagined to be a cosmopolitan small independent peninsula located somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.
The novel is episodic, with no overarching plot.[4] But contains several episodes describing the author's subjective experience in Hav. A string of evocative episodes include visiting a languid casino, meeting a courteous man claiming to be the true Caliph, watching a city-wide roof race, and a visit to the mysterious British agency.
The novel concludes with an invited visit to a strange ritual conclave where the author observes several cowled men, whom she thinks she might recognise as her acquaintances in Hav.[4] She then recounts the rise of strange and ill-defined tensions in the country, and decides to leave amidst growing unrest. On the last line of the novel the author writes that she could, from the train station, see warships approaching on the horizon.
Genre
Last Letters from Hav and its sequel Hav of the Myrmidons are works of imaginative fiction. The similarity in style to travel literature and the evocative nature of the fiction make genre classification difficult. However Ursula K. Le Guin notes in her introduction to the collected volume Hav that the work is clearly a work of science fiction as it uses imaginative fiction to address issues raised by the social sciences.[5]
Reception
Upon publication the work received a generally positive reception with reviewers noting the genre confusion with travel literature and Jan Morris's history as a travel writer herself.[6][2] Following the publication there were reports of travel agents being contacted for information on how to travel to Hav.[2] Morris claimed someone had contacted the Royal Geographical Society asking for information on how to reach Hav.[7]
Upon publication of Last Letters from Hav in the compilation volume Hav, the reviews of the work along with its companion Hav of the Myrmidons were overwhelmingly positive. The New York Review of Books described the book as "... dazzlingly sui-generis, part erudite travel memoir, part speculative fiction, part cautionary political tale. It transports the reader to an extraordinary place that never was, but could well be."[3]
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