The World Beneath the World: The Endless Search for the Planet’s Deepest Cave
David Rose

Having discovered and explored previously unseen caves on three continents,  David will return to the underworld in this forthcoming book, an enthralling blend of memoir, history and cultural exploration. It will be the first account of an unsung golden age of exploration: five decades that have seen the discovery and mapping of caves of unprecedented depth, remoteness and severity, requiring their explorers to spend many days underground in hostile, challenging environments.

Similar fields, such as mountaineering and polar exploration, have generated a rich and varied literature, with international best-sellers aimed at the general reader such as Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Julian Sancton’s recent Madness at the End of Earth. Other best-sellers have explained the appeal of esoteric pursuits, such as Tim Ecott’s Neutral Buoyancy, a history and memoir of scuba diving, and Richard Askwith’s Feet in the Clouds, a love letter to the sport of fell-running. There are no equivalent books that deal with caving.

The theme that provides the central narrative will be the seemingly endless quest for the planet’s deepest cave—endless, because until every cave has been found and mapped, no one can be sure that any current record-holder will not be usurped, as every record holder to date has been.

The book will reveal the inside stories of epic adventures without resort to exaggeration or hyperbole, conveying the experience of navigating vice-like squeezes, deep vertical shafts and underground river tunnels in order to extend the limits of the known. Countering the predominantly negative view of caves presented by modern media, it will also convey the sheer wonder of exploring regions of the underworld for the first time.

The scale and depth of recent cave discoveries makes rescuing anyone unlucky enough to be injured far inside them presents enormous challenges—as the so far untold rescue narratives in this book will make clear. As a caver for more than half a century, David is uniquely placed to fill this gap.

The book will be illustrated with stunning images collected by the author, along with cave surveys and maps.