In the land of white death
Subtitle: an epic story of survival in the Siberian Arctic
By: Valerian Albanov ; preface by Jon Krakauer ; introduction by David Roberts ; Alison Anderson, translator ; with additional material from William Barr's translation from the Russian
Series: Thorndike Press large print adventure series
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Thorndike, Me
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9780786232895
Subjects: Travel; Svi︠a︡tai︠a︡ Anna (Ship); Discovery and exploration
Work titles: Mezhdu zhiznʹi︠u︡ i smertʹi︠u︡
Description: In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea, a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.  For nearly a year and a half, the twenty-five men and one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships and danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef Land. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, and mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal-a story that Jon Krakauer calls an "astounding, utterly compelling book," and David Roberts calls "as lean and taut as a good thriller"-is nearly miraculous.