Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica

Front Cover
Random House Publishing Group, Mar 16, 1999 - Travel - 384 pages
It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world.

This is a book about the call of the wild and the response of the spirit to a country that exists perhaps most vividly in the mind. Sara Wheeler spent seven months in Antarctica, living with its scientists and dreamers. No book is more true to the spirit of that continent--beguiling, enchanted and vast beyond the furthest reaches of our imagination. Chosen by Beryl Bainbridge and John Major as one of the best books of the year, recommended by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune, one of the Seattle Times's top ten travel books of the year, Terra Incognita is a classic of polar literature.
 

Contents

PART
1
TWO Terra Nova Bay
27
THREE Landscapes of the Mind
44
FOUR The Other Side of Silence
61
FIVE The Naked Soul of Man
78
SIX At the South Pole
101
SEVEN Feasting in the Tropics
133
EIGHT The Response of the Spirit
145
TWELVE One of the Boys
208
THIRTEEN Fossil Bluff and the Ski Hi Nunataks
231
FOURTEEN Afloat in the Southern Ocean
263
Ross Island and McMurdo Sound
280
Cape Evans
305
SEVENTEEN Restoration
326
Ulysses
335
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
343

NINE Igloos and Nitroglycerine
166
TEN Icebreaker
186
PART
195
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
349
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1999)

Sara Wheeler is the author of many books of biography and travel, including Access All Areas: Selected Writings 1990–2011 and Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through ChileTerra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica was an international bestseller that The New York Times described as "gripping, emotional" and "compelling," and The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle was chosen as Book of the Year by Michael Palin and Will Self, among others. Wheeler lives in London.

Bibliographic information