Synopsis

Veteran explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s excruciating and inspiring expedition to Antarctica aboard the Endurance has long captured the public imagination. South is his own first-hand account of this epic adventure.

As war clouds darkened over Europe in 1914, a party led by Shackleton set out to make the first crossing of the entire Antarctic continent via the Pole. But their initial optimism was short-lived as ice floes closed around their ship, gradually crushing it and marooning twenty-eight men on the polar ice. Alone in the world’s most unforgiving environment, Shackleton and his team began a brutal quest for survival. And as the story of their journey across treacherous seas and a wilderness of glaciers and snow fields unfolds, the scale of their courage and heroism becomes movingly clear.

• First time published as a Penguin Classic
• Includes a selection of Frank Hurley's famous photographs
• Features a new Introduction by Fergus Fleming

Biography

Sir Ernest Shackleton, C.V.O. (1874-1922) is regarded as perhaps the greatest of all Antarctic explorers. He was a member of Captain Scott's 1901-1903 expedition to the South Pole, and in 1907 led his own expedition on the whaler Nimrod, coming within ninety-seven miles of the South Pole, the feat for which he was knighted. The events of that expedition are chronicled in his first book, The Heart of the Antarctic. He is considered one of England's greatest heroes for his actions during the ill-fated Endurance expedition, leading all of his men to safety after being marooned for two years on the polar ice. South is his recounting of this expedition. He died at age forty-seven during his final expedition, and was buried in the whaler's cemetary on South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic.