Journalist and children’s writer Sergey Bezborodov took part in a wintering of the Soviet polar observatory on Franz Josef Land—the northernmost human settlement in the world—in 1933–34. This book offers an engaging account of the lives of the winterers: the difficult everyday routine, heavy work, and dramatic events that occurred during the expedition. The book has a complicated fate. In 1937, soon after it was printed, the author was arrested and the print run destroyed. The text and illustrations were restored from one of the few surviving copies.
The series «Ex cineribus» is devoted to books that were lost or unjustly forgotten as a result of Stalinist repressions. The Gulag History Museum, the Memory Foundation, and the «Bila Vorona» («White Raven») publishing house return the destroyed books—and the memory of their authors—to readers.