Finding Endurance

'Engaging, absorbing and crammed with marvellous stories, Finding Endurance is a tale about exploring the cold, told with much warmth.' MICK HERRON 'Beautiful, thrilling, heroic and kind, a ripping yarn' CLAIRE ROBERTSON, AUTHOR OF THE SPIRAL HOUSE 'Tender, heartfelt and lyrical' PETINA GAPPAH, AUTHOR OF OUT OF DARKNESS, SHINING LIGHT 'An exhilarating read' HENRIETTA ROSE-INNES, AUTHOR OF GREEN LION. Since the discovery of the wreck of Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance on the bed of the Antarctic ocean, the world has been enthralled anew by one of the greatest stories of all time. Acclaimed South African writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey, himself a Shackleton aficionado, revisits this dramatic event, which managed to sweep the tide of anger and rancour off the timelines and front pages of the world. He asks how so many ordinary people, who don't know a nunatak from a barquentine, were so moved at the finding of a small wooden ship once sailed by a half-forgotten Irishman? In re-examining the story and its players, he presents new details and a new understanding of the courage and hardship of the Endurance voyage, and reminds us of how extraordinary humans can be. Not all is lost, and what has been lost can be regained: the ocean has given us something back. What's more, we are reminded that miracles still happen: human miracles, performed by flawed people in helpless situations.

Finding Endurance is beautiful, thrilling, heroic and kind, a ripping yarn and a generous and humane reflection on this business of being human., Tender, heartfelt and lyrical., Engaging, absorbing and crammed with marvellous stories, Finding Endurance is a tale about exploring the cold, told with much warmth, I was held spellbound by this recounting of one of the world's great adventure stories. But beyond the gripping polar ordeal, I was moved to the core by tender insights - into love, home, fathers and sons, and the long game of life - that emerge like veins of bright and dark water through the ice. Bristow-Bovey shares a deep knowledge of his subject with great style - and more than a touch of Shackleton's own verve and heart. An exhilarating read., A wonderful, thoughtful account of the Endurance expedition and its fabled boss: as Darrel Bristow-Bovey points out in these pages, "We should indeed all be such failures as Shackleton." In weaving in a personal story - his father claimed to have sailed south on Endurance - Bristow-Bovey reveals ways in which "the human heart has space for opposite things". I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

DARREL BRISTOW-BOVEY is a prize-winning screenwriter, travel writer, and a newspaper and magazine columnist. He's the author of five books which have been translated into seven languages, including Spanish, Estonian and Portuguese. He was born in South Africa, studied under JM Coetzee and Andre Brink, and currently divides his time between Cape Town, the UK and a hillside on the Greek Peloponnese. His fascination with the Endurance expedition began as a small boy, when his father first told him that he had been south with Shackleton. He still believes him.