Britain's foremost woman travel writer Sara Wheeler records her life of adventure, from the Antarctic to Zanzibar
Sara Wheeler Book order (chronological)
Sara Wheeler is celebrated for her compelling travel writing, often delving into remote and challenging environments. Her prose, rich with historical and geographical detail, frequently explores the human experience within extreme conditions. Wheeler masterfully blends personal observation with broader context, offering readers insightful perspectives on the world. Her work is lauded for its ability to bring history and places to life through vivid narrative.






Mud and Stars
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
A witty and insightful tour of contemporary Russia, using its Golden Age writers, from Pushkin to Tolstoy, as guides: part history, part sociopolitical commentary, this text reveals the heart of a country that never fails to surprise readers.
Chile. Cestování po štíhlé zemi
- 286 pages
- 11 hours of reading
Vyprávění o cestování po Chile je nejen poučné – zeměpisně, historicky i politicky –, ale také velmi čtivé a vtipné. Chile, dlouhé 4 270 kilometrů, avšak o šířce nepřesahující 180 kilometrů, rozkládající se mezi širým oceánem a nejdelším horským pásmem na světě, není zemí, jež se snadno mapuje, jak zjistila britská cestovatelka Sara Wheeler, která ji sama se dvěma batohy procestovala odshora až dolů, od nejsušší pouště světa až po mrazivé pustiny Antarktidy. K autorčiným zážitkům v této zemi patří mimo jiné vánoce s lamím sendvičem ve 4000 m.n.m., pobyt v hodinovém hotelu v Santiagu a plavba kolem mysu Horn s rakví na palubě. Její vyprávění je nejen poučné — zeměpisně, historicky i politicky, ale také velmi čtivé a vtipné.
Too Close to the Sun
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
Presents a story of big guns and small planes, princes from England and sultans from Zanzibar, marauding lions, syphilis, self-destruction and the tragedy of the human heart. The author tracks her quarry from a dreamlike Edwardian childhood in a Lincolnshire mansion through to the battlefields of the East African campaign.
Shackletons Expedition in die Antarktis
- 187 pages
- 7 hours of reading
You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of the Endurance , stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps." It did not, however, get the ship's twenty-five crew members, all of whom survived an eight-hundred-mile voyage across sea, land, and ice to South Georgia, the nearest inhabited island. First published in 1931, Endurance tells the full story of that doomed 1914-16 expedition and incredible rescue, as well as relating Worsley's further adventures fighting U-boats in the Great War, sailing the equally treacherous waters of the Arctic, and making one final (and successful) assault on the South Pole with Shackleton. It is a tale of unrelenting high adventure and a tribute to one of the most inspiring and courageous leaders of men in the history of exploration.
Amazonian
- 272 pages
- 10 hours of reading
A collection of previously unpublished travel writing from women who are members of the Amazonians club for women travel writers. Contributors include writers such Julia Blackburn, Robyn Davidson, Jenny Diski, Martha Gellhorn and Katie Hickman.
Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica
- 384 pages
- 14 hours of reading
It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world. This is a book about the call of the wild and the response of the spirit to a country that exists perhaps most vividly in the mind. Sara Wheeler spent seven months in Antarctica, living with its scientists and dreamers. No book is more true to the spirit of that continent--beguiling, enchanted and vast beyond the furthest reaches of our imagination. Chosen by Beryl Bainbridge and John Major as one of the best books of the year, recommended by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune, one of the Seattle Times's top ten travel books of the year, Terra Incognita is a classic of polar literature.
Ihre eher zufällig erwachte Sehnsucht nach Chile, dem Land der Extreme, läßt die junge britische Reiseschriftstellerin Sara Wheeler nicht mehr los. Das geheimnisvolle Land - ein wunderschöner Streifen Erde zwischen schneebedeckten Gipfeln und dem rauen Pazifik, den heißesten Wüsten der Erde und dem mystischen Feuerland - erkundet sie während einer sechsmonatigen Tour, die sie von Norden nach Süden bis in die Antarktis führt.§Klug, unkonventionell und witzig zugleich schildert sie ihre Eindrücke von diesem grandiosen kontrastreichen Land. Ihre Natur- und Panoramabeschreibungen bezeugen ebenso wie ihre Aufzeichnungen von vielen Begegnungen mit Menschen aller Art eine große Leidenschaft für Chile.
Squeezed in between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide - not a country which lends itself easily to maps. Nor, as Sara Wheeler found out, does it easily lend itself to a lone woman with two carpetbags who wishes to travel from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Yet, despite bureaucratic, geographic and climatic setbacks, Sara Wheeler managed to complete that journey in six months, discovering en route a country that is quite extraordinarily diverse. This improbable ribbon of land has been home to Andean tribes who remain the most scientifically neglected people in the world; it has been conquered by conquistadores, pillaged by Sir Francis Drake (no hero in Chile), exploited by foreign imperialists, blighted by the Panama Canal, governed by the world's first democratically-elected Marxist president and stamped upon by one of this century's most reviled dictators.


