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.
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.
Exploring the contrasts between travel and staying at home, this work by a renowned travel writer delves into the joys and challenges of both experiences. Through vivid storytelling and insightful reflections, the author captures the essence of adventure, whether it’s found in distant lands or familiar surroundings. Themes of discovery, introspection, and the value of place are interwoven, offering readers a unique perspective on the meaning of exploration in its various forms.
Recognized as one of the best books of 2011 by the Globe and Mail, this title features a compelling narrative that captivates readers with its unique themes and rich character development. It explores profound ideas and emotional depth, making it a standout choice for those seeking an engaging and thought-provoking read. The book's distinctive voice and storytelling style invite readers to immerse themselves in its world, ensuring a memorable literary experience.
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.
A collection of previously unpublished travel writing from women who are members of the Amazonians club for women travel writers.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.
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.