An Inconvenience of Penguins: Epic voyages in pursuit of the world's most beloved bird

(Hardback)

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Description

The problem started, as problems often do, with a penguin.

From Kings and Emperors to Macaronis and Rockhoppers, penguins are one of the most immediately recognisable animals on Earth. Yet for all that familiarity, what do we really know about them An Inconvenience of Penguins follows award-winning travel writer Jamie Lafferty as he visits all 18 species in a bid to understand the birds and their extraordinarily varied habitats a little better. On voyages to some of the world's most inaccessible and challenging landscapes, he recounts the history of our unique relationship with the world's most popular bird, telling stories of the penguins, but also the people and places around them.

From getting stranded in the Galapagos to marching through African guano fields, and leading photography groups in the Antarctic to taking psychedelics on the Falklands, this is a birding quest like no other. Along the way Lafferty relives the experiences of early polar explorers, for who penguins were perplexing mysteries, welcome companions and even occasional meals, and meets the modern penguin lovers trying to save their fragile environments.

Featuring cameos from a wide cast of characters including Ernest Shackleton, Charles Darwin, and Sir Francis Drake, as well as beautiful photographs of each penguin species, An Inconvenience of Penguins is part-love letter to and part-biography of these remarkable creatures.

Reviews

Fascinating and funny, this book - unlike its charismatic subject - wonderfully takes flight. -- Peter Ross, author of Steeple Chasing
Jamie Lafferty has written a kind of Antarctic 'Roughing It'--a wise, rude, hilarious and oddly moving account of the author's unusual quest to see all eighteen species of penguin. Like several of the birds he writes about, real travel writers are critically endangered. 'An Inconvenience of Penguins' proves they are not extinct. -- Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain
Jamie Lafferty is undoubtedly one of the best travel writers in the English language today: this brilliant debut is both a mad quest and fantastically original memoir. It reveals, in glorious technicolour, so much about these little black and white birds. -- Oliver Smith, author of On This Holy Island
Travel writer turned global birder Jamie Lafferty embarks on an epic quest - in which the journey is at least as entertaining as the end result. -- Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds That Changed the World

Author Bio

Jamie Lafferty is a regular contributor to the Sunday Times, the Financial Times and National Geographic Traveller, while his work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Telegraph, and BBC Travel. He has been nominated for over 20 awards in the travel writing industry and won Travel Writer of the Year at the Travel Media Awards in 2020 and in April 2023 won Specialist Travel Writer of the Year at the TravMedia Awards. When he's not traveling, he lives in Glasgow.