Missing for 130 years, now available in German for the first time "One of the most exciting literary discoveries of recent years" Philip Hoare, Daily Mail He could not pass up this opportunity: In the spring of 1880, when he was just under 21 years old and studying medicine in Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle was asked if he would like to work as a ship's doctor on the whaler Hope for six months. He wanted - not knowing that the journey to the icy polar sea would bring forth hidden talents in him: Soon, Doyle was less in demand as a doctor than as a gifted marksman, who tirelessly participated in the hunt for seals and birds and courageously ventured out onto ice floes (from which he fell so often and into the water that the captain called him the "Great Northern Diver"). On board Doyle got to know the endless waiting for the whale, discussed philosophy and religion, box.