Mawson's Will: The Greatest Polar Survival Story Ever Written Author: Lennard Bickel | Language: English | ISBN:
1586420003 | Format: PDF
Mawson's Will: The Greatest Polar Survival Story Ever Written Description
Review
Named One of the Ten Best Books of Twentieth-Century Exploration by The Explorer's Club
"The most outstanding solo journey ever recorded in Antarctic history." --
Sir Edmund Hillary
"A riveting account . . . makes Mawson's achievement a symbol of the desire to live." --
The New York Times Book Review
"A powerful reading experience." --
Publishers Weekly
"Both grim and inspiring reading." --
The Wall Street Journal About the Author
Australian author Lennard Bickel reconstructed Mawson's journey from the diaries of Mawson and other members of his expedition. He is the author of seven books, including
Shackleton's Forgotten Men.
- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Steerforth; Subsequent edition (February 4, 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1586420003
- ISBN-13: 978-1586420000
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Rarely has fiction served the truth so well. Rarely has the truth served fiction so well.
Mawson's own account of his ordeal, in "The Home of The Blizzard", seems relatively matter of fact. We may not have marvelled at Mawson's accomplishment in surviving if we relied only on his way of telling it. Although a good writer, his specialities were geography and exploration.
Bickel's presentation here in "Mawson's Will" makes Mawson's accomplishment more touching than Mawson's own presentation. But it took an extraordinary writing accomplishment by Bickel to convey Mawson's accomplishment. Poetic license? To fail to understand how much faithful art it took to go from Mawson's diaries and book to Bickel's account would be to not appreciate how much effort and skill it took for Bickel to bring Mawson's tale so fully alive. If Bickel hadn't taken poetic license, this tale may have been of more interest to the most purist historian but it would have been of far less human interest. Sensitive to our lack of understanding of the Antartic experience, Bickel put us there in a way we never could have gotten from Mawson's own account. The last one hundred pages of "Mawson's Will" are as riveting as anything I've read in years.
Bickel's faithfulness to Mawson has made this a special work of art. Because of Bickel, we can be amazed at how Mawson survived and understand something profound about the human will.
P.S. I wake up the next day to find the story is still strong on my mind. Mawson returned to Australia to find his beloved waiting, married her, in time actually returned to the Antartic for exploration, and lived til 73.
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