A Mile Down

Sinking deep into debt, and encountering everything from a lost rudder to freak storms, Vann is on the verge of losing everything - including his life.

Part high-seas adventure, part journey of self-discovery, A Mile Down is a gripping and unforgettable story of struggle and redemption, by a writer at the top of his game.

You gaze entranced as his destiny unfolds…Vann pulls off the most gripping passage of sea-catastrophe writing I have read outside Conrad, a chest-tightening, concretely detailed, cold, sickening and cumulatively desperate depiction of life turning murderous.

At once memoir, confession, travel book and thriller, David Vann’s A Mile Down is so vivid and intense you will dread to see it end…. The book is a testimony of passion and courage in deadly storms and scarier calms, of a man wrestling with his ghosts and gifts in the very shadow of paradise.

Vann brings his undoubted storytelling skill to his own experiences…unflinching honesty…a terrific piece of writing from a brave and talented author.

An antidote to the usual run of escape-to-the-sun memoirs.

Rarely has a memoir combined such raw self-exposure with such ultimately consoling insight.

David Vann was born in the Aleutian Islands and spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. He is the author of the international bestseller Legend of a Suicide – which has been translated into eighteen languages and won several prizes including the Prix Medicis Etranger – Caribou Island , Dirt, Goat Mountain and Aquarium. He is also the author of two bestselling non-fiction books, and has written for Atlantic Monthly , Esquire , the Sunday Times , Guardian , Sunday Telegraph , Financial Times and other magazines and newspapers.