Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins

By (author) Gavin Francis

* WINNER OF THE SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2013 * *Shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Prize* * Shortlisted for the 2013 RSL Ondaatje Prize * * Shortlisted for Banff Adventure Travel Prize * * Shortlisted for Saltire Book of the Year Award * Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition when he spent fourteen months as the base-camp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. So remote, 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. Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and very little human history, but also a rare oppurtunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Following the penguins throughout the year — from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness — Gavin Francis explores a world of great beauty conjured from the simplest elements, the hardship of living at 50 C below zero and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community bring.

Reviews of Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins

"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 "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 "One of the best travel titles I have read in a long time. Thoughtful, lyrical, extremely well written, it's a triumph." — Giles Foden Conde Nast Traveller "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." — Ed O'Loughlin Daily Telegraph "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." — Katherine MacInnes Literary Review