The Ends of the Earth

A lifelong traveller with an admitted ‘predilection

for unlovely things’, Roger Willemsen has

tramped over five continents in search of the ends

of the earth. Some are literally that—geographical

and topographical extremities like the Cape of Good

Hope, the Himalaya, the volcanoes of Kamchatka, and

the North Pole. Other endpoints take Willemsen’s

psychological endurance to breaking point—the

foetid warrens of a Mumbai brothel; a deathbed vigil

in a hospital ward in Minsk, Belarus; an afternoon

spent under Luca Signorelli’s fresco, The Last

Judgement, in Orvieto, Italy, in a futile wait for a

lover. And, through this series of remarkable sketches,

Willemsen manages to reach for another kind of end,

cathartic and healing—an end to love and lust, to

illusions, to order and understanding.

A brilliantly conceived and utterly original travelogue,

The Ends of the Earth is as much an exploration

of landscapes and geographies as it is of the psyche.

This volume is perfect for every kind of traveller.