Description

Siberia, to me, is a fairy-tale land.

Fritz Doerries set out on his first trip to Eastern Siberia in 1877, when there were still blank spaces on maps of the world. Travelling alone or with his brothers, he climbed mountains, traversed great rivers, explored remote islands and crossed treacherous lakes of ice, always with one purpose: to augment man’s knowledge of the natural world.

Bears, tigers, vipers, bandits, stormy seas, frostbite, ice chasms fathoms deep – every danger was faced head on and overcome. And yet he remained defenceless against the charms of the landscape, and the animals, birds and butterflies he found there.

Through his twenty-two years in Siberia, Doerries collected a wealth of essential material for scientific institutions, fundamental to our understanding of fauna and flora. This account of his adventures, set down for his daughters in his ninetieth year, and adapted for publication by Roy Jacobsen and Anneliese Pitz, is his second great legacy.

Translated from the Norwegian by Sean Kinsella

Publisher Review

A captivating and fascinating tale from The Wild East that Siberia once was. Pitz and Jacobsen bring Doerries’ strenuous adventures to life in beautiful prose. This book is a true gem that deserves many readers — Erika Fatland. A captivating tale from a long-lost world — Anna Reid Both a thrilling adventure story and a lyrical record of wild nature, this is a unique portrait of frontier life and attitudes in Siberia and the Russian Far East at a time when few foreigners had penetrated the region so deeply. Doerries’ real-life tales, from the hair-raising to the transcendent, match anything from the American West — Tom Parfitt, author of High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland A captivating and fascinating tale from The Wild East that Siberia once was. Pitz and Jacobsen bring Doerries’ strenuous adventures to life in beautiful prose. This book is a true gem that deserves many readers — Erika Fatland