The 10 Greatest Real-Life Adventure Books

Nominated by To The End Of The Earth author Tom Avery.

In 1947, to "prove" that the Pacific was settled from the West (they couldn't), Norwegian Heyerdahl and his companions sailed 4,300 miles from Peru towards Polynesia in – or, rather, on – the kind of primitive sea-craft the aboriginal settlers would have used. "I read it as a boy, and recently re-read it," says Avery. "Six men crossing the Earth's largest ocean on a balsa raft? Surely the most inspiring adventure story ever told."

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Nominated by British explorer and Into The Abyss author Benedict Allen.

"The narrator escapes from a gulag in 1941, near the Arctic Circle," says Allen. "He walks for a year through blizzards and deserts before crossing the Himalayas to reach safety in Calcutta." Rawicz probably based his account on the escapades of another Polish gulag survivor, but Allen remains awestruck. "Even though it seemed wildly implausible, I found his stirring tale of endurance wonderfully inspiring as a child." We agree. This escape yarn makes Papillon look like Porridge.

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Nominated by Polar explorer Ben Saunders.

Ditch any suspicion of titular hyperbole: this story, told by a young member of Captain Scott's expedition team, sees three men haul 300 kilos through a dark Polar wilderness in -70ºC. Yet the narrator – British upper lip, stiffened by cold – shows stoic wit throughout. "It's an epic tale of suffering and derring-do," says Saunders. "The New York Review Of Books said it was, 'To travel, what War And Peace is to the novel – a masterpiece.' I'd go along with that!"

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Nominated by Between A Rock And A Hard Place author Aron Ralston.

"These men added more territory to the maps of Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton or anyone else from this heroic age of exploration," says Ralston of the team whose diaries formed the basis for Australian author Bickel's harrowing account of a blighted 1911 mission. "Douglas Mawson lost his supplies and his team-mates, ate the sled dogs then, alone and with flesh falling off in slabs, walked 320 miles across mountains and crevasse fields to his support crew. He missed them by hours, forcing him to await rescue at base the following year."

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Nominated by Touching The Void author Joe Simpson (www.noordinaryjoe.co.uk).

"So harrowing – impossible to put down," is how Simpson describes Israeli adventurer Ghinsberg's account of a reckless trek through the Bolivian Amazon which he undertook with a disparate, ill-organised band of backpackers in 1982 – braving leeches, fire-ants, jaguars, snakes and foot-rot along the way. "I had to resist shouting at the protagonists to turn back, but found it impossible not to carry on reading as the grisly tale unfolded. Paradoxically, it's both tragic and inspiring."

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Nominated by climber and Esquire contributor David Pickford.

"This is a brilliantly researched account of the true story behind Herman Melville's Moby Dick," says Pickford. "It saw 21 seamen attempt a 2,000-mile voyage to Chile with only three small whaleboats, a few Galápagos tortoises, some stale bread and enough water for half a pint a day, after an enraged sperm whale rammed their ship." Expect vengeful whales, violent dehydration and cannibalism in what Pickford calls "an extraordinary tale of epic survival against near-impossible odds". What more can an adventure book deliver?

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Nominated by mountaineer and Learning To Breathe author Andy Cave.

"I love the preposterousness of this story," says Cave of Benuzzi's suspense-rich account of one of history's more tenacious prisoner-of-war escape capers. "Three Italian POWs break out of an East African prison camp and ascend Mount Kenya using ice axes and crampons fashioned from rubbish found on a dump and bits of the barbed-wire fence imprisoning them," he says. "It's deeply moving – it provides a unique perspective on the effects of war and the power of imagination."

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Nominated by Polar explorer and mountaineer Adrian Hayes.

Simpson's harrowing account of his and Simon Yates' calamitous assault, in 1985, on Siula Grande, Peru, has rightly become a legendary fable for what humans are capable of doing to survive. "It's utterly riveting. One of the most amazing escapes, in hopeless odds, ever achieved – let alone written about," says Hayes. "To lower yourself further down into a crevasse – and away from possible rescue – was a remarkable act of courage from Simpson. As Churchill said: 'When you're going through hell, keep going'."

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Nominated by adventurer Ben Fogle.

"When you read the opening chapter you can't fail to be amazed at the sheer scale of the expedition," says Fogle of Burke and Wills' pioneering journey into the Australian outback back in 1860. "Opinions are divided as to whether they were reckless mavericks or heroic adventurers. I would say they were heroic mavericks. They didn't know if they were going to fall off the edge of the world or be eaten by cannibals. It's a captivating read which reminds us that today we might pretend to be great explorers but we aren't really – we are simply following in other people's footsteps."

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Nominated by American explorer Todd Carmichael.

Overweight, inexperienced and depressed, Times Literary Supplement natural history scribe Redmond O'Hanlon and poet James Fenton – a man equally unsuited to the task – set out on a jungle-walking mission in Borneo in 1981. Only snakes, crocs, TB, cholera, malaria, parasitic worms and ridicule from their Dayak guides stood between them and their hunt for a rare albino rhinoceros. It's executed with Pythonesque drollery. "Pick up one of O'Hanlon's books, and you're on an expedition with the wittiest writer-cum-explorer-cum-naturalist on the planet," says Carmichael.

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