In April 1992 Chris McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do family, hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness. He had given all his savings to charity, abandoned his car and possessions, burnt all the money in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a hunter...

Jon Krakauer, bestselling author of "Into thin air", uses McCandless' restless progress around the wide spaces of North America to explore the call of the wild and the mentality of those who succumb to it. What emerges from this mesmerizing, heartbreaking story is a version of the wilderness that is hard and seductive; a place where one can quite possibly find one's self, but also opening the dark possibility that we might find our own nature strange and disturbing-