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Oliver Sacks meets Bear Grylls in this unique voyage around the human body, from the prize-winning author of Empire Antarctica

About the Author

Gavin Francis is a GP, and the author of True North and Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins, which won the Scottish Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and Costa Prize. He also writes for Guardian, The Times, London Review of Books and Granta. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and children.

Reviews

A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body: thought-provoking and eloquent.
*Hilary Mantel*

Wonderful, subtle, unpretentious ... produces a kind of complicity between the author, the reader, and the subject
*John Berger*

I read this book transfixed... The style is crisp and fast and the human tales irresistible. I was left with many nuggets.
*The Times*

In Francis's beautifully written, exquisitely thoughtful, and completely captivating cartography, the body is a superbly-lit museum filled with treasures, and Dr. Francis the perfect guide who deftly weaves together science and story to reveal the wondrous flesh-and-blood underpinnings of our daily lives. It's a spellbinding view.
*Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper’s Wife and The Human Age*

So enthralling and so well written that it should win its own clutch of prizes... immensely engaging and often unexpected. His achievement here is to guide readers through his special landscape with such eloquence and subtlety.
*Sunday Times*

Grand, eloquent stuff, occasionally humorous, frequently moving and invariably informative... The end result is a thoroughly entertaining, provocative work.
*The Observer*

A quietly radical, three-dimensional view of issues such as reproduction, birth, death and disability that has the power, at times, to make you stop mid-sentence and carefully reassess some of your most basic assumptions... its greatest strength is its profound yet understated compassion.
*The Scotsman*

The joy of Mr Francis's work lies in the fact that although he delights in the body's physical reality, he takes care not to reduce human experience to that alone.
*The Economist*

A beautifully written, elegant series of essays - both medical and literary - that conveys wonderfully well the fascination, mystery and beauty that is to be found in our bodies.
*Henry Marsh*

Adventures in Human Being could be described as a road map to the flesh, written by a guide who is scrupulously attentive to the details of how we work and exquisitely aware of the glimpses of the soul behind the machinery. Francis is not only an experienced doctor but also steeped in both the classics and contemporary literature. His breadth is not just impressive but entirely convincing.
*New Statesman*

A wise and lyrical tour of the human body
*The Scottish Herald*

A beautifully written guide to our wonders and weaknesses that combines the precision of science with a profound insight into the human condition.
*Guardian*