The Story of a Life, That of a Modern-Day Ulysses
Vitus Bering led, at the beginning of the 18th century, two colossal expeditions to discover the furthest reaches of the Russian Empire in Siberia, to verify whether the American and Eurasian continents were connected, and to find a passage through the Arctic Ocean to reach India and China.
No sailor had ever walked as much as he did. From the Danish coasts of Jutland to the Kamchatka Peninsula, he was tasked with uniting land and sea on the same map of the world. He traversed the steppes and forests of Tartary, crossed its mountains and valleys, descended its rivers. He reached the northernmost tip of the Far East, crossed the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, and saw the Great Mountain on the shores of America. With contrary winds, the complications of political power, and the thought of returning. Until shipwreck.
This is the account of the tribulations of Vitus Bering (1681-1741), a Danish explorer and captain who led colossal expeditions at the turn of the Age of Enlightenment to the farthest corners of Siberia, and even beyond, to Alaska.
Olivier Remaud recounts the odyssey of this great mariner who was more irritated by political rivalries and the speculations of cartographers than by anything else. He describes the choices and doubts of a man of the open seas, a born traveler, who lived like a nomad before dying on an island. A life in which a woman of action, his wife Anna, played a major role. Between Ulysses and Gulliver, an intimate portrait that reads like an adventure novel.
Source: Babelio
