A Secret Longing

Within five weeks of its publication last fall, Thor Heyerdahl's tale of rafting the Pacific, Kon-Tiki (TIME, Sept. 18), climbed to the top of the U.S. bestseller list and has stayed there ever since. Including a Book-of-the-Month Club distribution of 200,000, U.S. sales have topped 375,000.

The Kon-Tiki boom in Britain has been even more remarkable. In a country with a third as many people as the U.S., the book has sold 230,000 copies in eleven months. Another adventure yarn that has been racing Kon-Tiki in British bookstores is Eric Williams' The Wooden Horse (TIME, Jan. 23, 1950), a suspense-tilled story of the escape of British soldiers from a German prison camp in Silesia. It has sold 250,000 copies since its British publication two years ago.

London Publisher Philip Unwin thinks he knows why Britons, cabined in their own austere little isles, have been snapping up such books. "Every man, whether at a factory bench or sitting in an office with his hat and rolled umbrella hung behind him, secretly longs for the sort of adventure of which these books tell. The illusion is heightened because they are true stories. He knows it can be done and has been done."

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