White South - Softcover

Innes, Hammond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099577836 ISBN 13: 9780099577836

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2013

Synopsis

A 22,000 ton whaling ship steams into a broken plain of white, glimmering ice during the howling fury of an Antarctic gale. What madness drives the ship forwards, deeper and deeper into the ice until its jagged edges hold her fast? Marooned amidst the pitiless, frozen wastes, the crew of the Southern Cross make a desperate attempt to survive against the odds.

About this title

About the Author:

Ralph Hammond Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, on 15 July 1913 and educated at Cranbrook School, Kent. He left school aged eighteen, and worked successively in publishing, teaching and journalism. In 1936, in need of money in order to marry, he wrote a supernatural thriller, The Doppleganger, which was published in 1937 as part of a two-year, four book deal. In 1939 Innes moved to a different publisher, and began to write compulsively, continuing to publish throughout his service in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. Innes travelled widely to research his novels and always wrote from personal experience - his 1940s novels The Blue Ice and The White South were informed by time spent working on a whaling ship in the Antarctic, while The Lonely Skier came out of a post-war skiing course in the Dolomites. He was a keen and accomplished sailor, which passion inspired his 1956 bestseller The Wreck of the Mary Deare. The equally successful 1959 film adaptation of this novel enabled Innes to buy a large yacht, the Mary Deare, in which he sailed around the world for the next fifteen years, accompanied by his wife and fellow author Dorothy Lang. Innes wrote over thirty novels, as well as several works of non-fiction and travel journalism. His thrilling stories of spies, counterfeiters, black markets and shipwreck earned him both literary acclaim and an international following, and in 1978 he was awarded a CBE. Hammond Innes died at his home in Suffolk on 10th June 1998.

From AudioFile:

The protagonist is caught up in a whaling enterprise near the Antarctic–there is shipwreck, villainy, near starvation, and epic journeys–Innes at his best. Stephen Thorne's voice and tone both fit the story perfectly. Honest and open, British, deliberate but exuding great interest in the story, he moves effortlessly along, even when articulating Norwegian and Scottish accents. When a character is wounded, the listener can hear the pain. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0099577836
• ISBN 13: 9780099577836
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336