DescriptionPublished by Little Brown, London, 2004, 1st UK Edition, D/w, Fine. While reading Valerian Albanov’s In the Land of White Death, prolific author and polar expert David Roberts came across an old legend of four shipwrecked Russian sailors who had managed to survive for over six years on Svalbard in the high Arctic, following their shipwreck in 1743, before being rescued by a passing ship. Incredulous at first, Roberts determined to learn the truth about this astonishing story. This book is the result of that quest, a journey that took Roberts to libraries and archives on two continents and eventually to Russia and Svalbard itself. The book concludes with Roberts’ own four-man expedition to the desolate island where the ordeal took place and he marvels at the sailors’ survival against impossible odds, turning a true story into a legend that, centuries later, still fires the imagination.
