A lost-at-sea story deserves all our awe + MORE Jan 2nd

438 Days by Jonathan Franklin. No credit
Everyone presumed José Salvador Alvarenga to be dead. Cast adrift at sea by a storm, he scraped together food and fresh water. Near the end of his purgatory, it was all he could do to cling to his mind’s redoubts, fighting his descent into insanity. This was, for 438 days in 2012, the life of Alvarenga, a Mexican fisherman born in El Salvador whose two-man craft was slung into the Pacific Ocean with its undrinkable water, its sharks, and its mind-numbing expanse. Incredibly, Alvarenga survived, washing upon the shores of the Marshall Islands; his companion, Ezequiel Cordoba, did not.
Alvarenga’s story is told by the journalist, Jonathan Franklin, who wrote a bestselling account of the Chilean miners who famously survived a 2010 cave-in. As with that book, the plodding detail can sometimes mirror too closely the mundaneness of a life adrift. But it does allow you to feel every every tortilla craving; every bird’s neck snapping between his calloused hands, to be eaten; every pulse of an ocean that alternately rushed Alvarenga along its eddies and kept him imprisoned in an infinite stillness…

gulfnews.comAddress guests return for their belongings after firegulfnews.comThe Address Hotel Downtown as seen from January 1, 2016, at 11am. Image Credit: Sankha Kar / Gulf News. Shaikh Mohammad, accompanied by Shaikh Maktoum, visited The Address Downtown hotel, the site where a fire brokImage Credit: WAM. ( 1 of 2 ).Dubai blaze raises questions over Gulf skyscraper designReutersEmaar to restore fire-ravaged Address hotel to its gloryKhaleej TimesDubai New Year's fireworks go ahead as fire engulfs highrise hotelCBC.caNational Post -The National -Dubai Chronicleall 3,032 news articles »

gulfnews.comAddress guests return for their belongings after firegulfnews.comThe Address Hotel Downtown as seen from January 1, 2016, at 11am. Image Credit: Sankha Kar / Gulf News. Shaikh Mohammad, accompanied by Shaikh Maktoum, visited The Address Downtown hotel, the site where a fire brokImage Credit: WAM. ( 1 of 2 ).Dubai blaze raises questions over Gulf skyscraper designReutersEmaar to restore fire-ravaged Address hotel to its gloryKhaleej TimesDubai New Year's fireworks go ahead as fire engulfs highrise hotelCBC.caNational Post -The National -Dubai Chronicleall 3,032 news articles »

438 Days by Jonathan Franklin. No credit
Everyone presumed José Salvador Alvarenga to be dead. Cast adrift at sea by a storm, he scraped together food and fresh water. Near the end of his purgatory, it was all he could do to cling to his mind’s redoubts, fighting his descent into insanity. This was, for 438 days in 2012, the life of Alvarenga, a Mexican fisherman born in El Salvador whose two-man craft was slung into the Pacific Ocean with its undrinkable water, its sharks, and its mind-numbing expanse. Incredibly, Alvarenga survived, washing upon the shores of the Marshall Islands; his companion, Ezequiel Cordoba, did not.
Alvarenga’s story is told by the journalist, Jonathan Franklin, who wrote a bestselling account of the Chilean miners who famously survived a 2010 cave-in. As with that book, the plodding detail can sometimes mirror too closely the mundaneness of a life adrift. But it does allow you to feel every every tortilla craving; every bird’s neck snapping between his calloused hands, to be eaten; every pulse of an ocean that alternately rushed Alvarenga along its eddies and kept him imprisoned in an infinite stillness…