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Recognised by five literary awards and receiving instant acclaim, this is bestselling author Gavin Francis's account of a year as base camp doctor in Antarctica
WINNER OF THE SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
Gavin Francis spent fourteen months in one of the remotest places in the world: Halley, a research station in Antarctica. Storm-locked and frozen, it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.
In the icy emptiness of Antarctica, where one misstep outdoors can mean death but the confined corridors of Halley can drive you mad, Gavin challenges himself to thrive at the ends of the earth. In the penguin colonies, a species utterly adapted to the harsh environment, he finds community, inspiration and joy. Filled with stories of early travellers, the sparse beauty of the place, auroras, clouds, stars, sunlight, darkness, ice and snow.
With introduction by fellow writer and traveller Sara Wheeler.
“A highly readable, enjoyable account of one man’s year serving as a doctor at Halley Research Station, the British Antarctic Survey’s base on the Brunt Ice Shelf...A literate, stylish memoir of personal adventure rich in history, geography and science.”—Kirkus Review
"A book full of wonder"—Sunday Times
"A valuable addition to polar literature, vividly describing the brutal, but beautiful, realities of undergoing an Antarctic winter"—Sir Ranulph Fiennes
"Moving, mesmerizing, and wonderful"—The Economist
"Empire Antarctica is the embodiment of everything I admire in travel writing - a great journey, intense isolation, wide reading, vivid writing, scientific research, and something in the nature of an old-fashioned ordeal. That Gavin Francis is a medical doctor, with an important role to play in the darkness and cold at the ends of the earth, is a bonus. I loved this book"—Paul Theroux
"This is the sort of book that gives obsession a very good name. Here, in a cold, silent place you realise that obsession is another name for love. And love leads to extraordinary and beautiful writing . . . this is a wonderful book"—Sara Maitland
"A beautiful, profound and highly readable account of a remarkable personal adventure. Francis's pacing is deft, his prose vivid, his research worn lightly. This is probably as close as most of us will ever get to experiencing a modern polar winter. Empire Antarctica is surely destined to become a standard, not so much of travel as of staying very still"—Daily Telegraph
"An intense and lyrical portrait of the slowly changing polar seasons . . . shines with a clarity and lyricism descended from Thoreau"—Times Literary Supplement
"A beautiful hymn to limitless solitude . . . His bracing year spent among emperor penguins presents an ordeal that is also a joy. And it's beautifully written on every page"—Tom Adair
"Francis' best writing (and it is excellent) . . . is Robert Macfarlane on ice. This writing achieves the 'quilted quality' of silence, and through it we are brought to a new landscape of words"—Literary Review
"A finely written account of an extreme experience of the Antarctic, worthy to stand beside some of the great travel narratives in the English language"—RSL Ondaatje Prize Judges
Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the author of ten non-fiction books, most recently The Bridge Between Worlds: A Brief History of Connection. His books include Island Dreams, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2020; Adventures in Human Being, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award; and Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His work has been translated into nineteen languages, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
X: @gavinfranc