Fritz Dörries set out on his first trip to Siberia in 1877. The Arctic and Antarctic caps were yet to be explored. The world map was yet to be completed. It was a time of Eastern conquest. Not just in the form of a map, but everything that lived and grew there, all the species, and not least the people. Is it possible to travel so far, expose yourself to so much danger, explore so much, leave so much behind, be so dedicated and curious and fearless, and come out of it alive? Yes, it is ? because this story is true. Born into an esteemed family of entomologists I was of course expected to harbour an overwhelming love of nature within me too. At the age of four I was already beguiled by the East-Siberian wastes after my father showed me a drawing of a butterfly, the Parnassius nomion. The butterfly had never been captured, it didn't exist in any collection. Only in this drawing, and in Siberia. Dörries came from a cultivated family of entomologists in Hamburg. He was an experienced collector, and gardener, who had been in the military, and had studied biology, but was self-taught. Roy Jacobsen and his wife Anneliese Pitz have written a novel based on Dörries' recollections. The book includes the collector's own illustrations of butterflies, insects and places. Fritz Dörries couldn't have found better custodians of his life's work than Roy Jacobsen and his wife Anneliese Pitz. Both passionately interested in Siberia, they have travelled across it, studied it, and lived with this material for years. Translated from the Norwegian by Sean Kinsella