Short description
The story of Chris McCandless, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later. The text also investigates what makes some people leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature.
Long description
By examining the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later, internationally bestselling author Jon Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to explore the outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature. 'an astonishingly gifted writer: his account of 'Alex Supertramp' is powerfully dramatic, eliciting sympathy for both the idealistic, anti-consumerist boy - and his parents' Guardian 'a compelling tale of tragic idealism' The Times
Review
In April 1992, Christopher Johnson McCandless hitchhiked to Alaska, and walked into the wilderness alone. Four months later, a group of hunters found his decomposing body in an old bus. Reporting on the case, Jon Krakauer discovered a strange and unsettling story. McCandless, a high-achiever academically, and an excellent athlete, had dropped out of sight a couple of years prior to his death, given away all his savings, abandoned his possessions, and gone to live in the wilds, inspired by the likes of Thoreau and John Muir. Krakauer researched further, and here tells the story of the enigmatic McCandless, a young man whose stubbornness and idealism led him to shrug off the trappings of 20th-century civilization and live a life of great deprivation and asceticism, in a world unable to fulfil his needs. (Kirkus UK)
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