In the spring of 1880, 21-year-old medical student Arthur Conan Doyle received an unexpected offer to go on a six-month polar voyage on a whaling ship, which, in the words of the great writer, became a “strange and delightful” chapter of his biography. The choice between preparing for the next exam and a polar adventure was short-lived. From the Arctic, the future great writer brought a notebook with notes and his own drawings, which formed the basis of this book. In addition to the Arctic diaries, the book included Conan Doyle’s articles on swimming, written by him for the British and American magazines, and works of fiction based on the polar experience of the author - the mystical novella “Captain of the North Star” and the story about Sherlock Holmes “The Adventures of Black Peter”. Conan Doyle’s diaries are published in Russian for the first time.