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The Lost City of Z
The Lost City of Z
A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
by David Grann
After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century”: What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z? In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, vowing to make one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world’s largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his twenty-one-year-old son to prove that this ancient civilization–which he dubbed “Z”–existed. Then he and his expedition vanished.
For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett’s party and the Lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. As David Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s quest and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, drawn into the jungle’s “green hell.” His quest for the truth, and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett’s fate and “Z,” form the heart of this enthralling narrative.
For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett’s party and the Lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. As David Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s quest and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, drawn into the jungle’s “green hell.” His quest for the truth, and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett’s fate and “Z,” form the heart of this enthralling narrative.
After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century”: What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z? In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, vowing to make one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world’s largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his twenty-one-year-old son to prove that this ancient civilization–which he dubbed “Z”–existed. Then he and his expedition vanished.
For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett’s party and the Lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. As David Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s quest and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, drawn into the jungle’s “green hell.” His quest for the truth, and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett’s fate and “Z,” form the heart of this enthralling narrative.
For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett’s party and the Lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. As David Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s quest and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, drawn into the jungle’s “green hell.” His quest for the truth, and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett’s fate and “Z,” form the heart of this enthralling narrative.
Reviews-
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THE LOST CITY OF Z is a fascinating journey into the heart of the deepest, darkest Amazon. It will shatter the illusions of anyone who believes the interior of the rain forest is a kind and gentle place. Narrator Mark Deakins tells the story, in all its horrifying detail, of generations of explorers seeking the mysterious city of Z in the unforgiving jungle, starting with the exploration of British adventurer Perry Fawcett in 1925 as he sought evidence of a once-mighty culture in the forbidding jungle. He and his party were never to return. That, and the subsequent follow-up expeditions, are a triumph of storytelling. Romantic notions of paradise are quickly shattered by descriptions of insects, animals, and plants that inflict pain, disease, and death on intruders. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from October 13, 2008
In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city. Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker
, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction. He became interested in Fawcett while researching another story, eventually venturing into the Amazon to satisfy his all-consuming curiosity about the explorer and his fatal mission. Largely about Fawcett, the book examines the stranglehold of passion as Grann's vigorous research mirrors Fawcett's obsession with uncovering the mysteries of the jungle. By interweaving the great story of Fawcett with his own investigative escapades in South America and Britain, Grann provides an in-depth, captivating character study that has the relentless energy of a classic adventure tale. -
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"At once a biography, a detective story and wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing....suspenseful....rollicking....Fascinating....reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage, and it seems almost surely destined for a secure perch on the best-seller lists."
- The Washington Post "David Grann, recounts Fawcett's expeditions with all the pace of a white-knuckle adventure story.....What a grand tale it is!....Grann follows its twists and turns admirably. Thoroughly researched, vividly told, this is a thrill ride from start to finish."
- Rich Cohen, The New York Times Book Review "[O]utstanding....a powerful narrative, stiff lipped and Victorian at the center, trippy at the edges, as if one of those stern men of Conrad had found himself trapped in a novel by García Márquez."
- Simon Wincester, The Wall Street Journal "[V]ividly alive....What makes Mr. Grann's telling of the story so captivating is that he decides not simply to go off in search of yet more relics of our absent hero -- but to go off himself in search of the city that Fawcett was looking for so heroically when he suddenly went AWOL."
- The Los Angeles Times "A fascinating account....Grann expertly juggles narratives....breathtaking clarity of scene and immediacy; any writer who can breathe life into letters written by scientists in the early 1900s deserves more than a hat tip. Grann brings Fawcett's remarkable story to a beautifully written, perfectly paced fruition."
- Entertainment Weekly "A fascinating yarn that touches on science, history, and some truly obsessive personalities."
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USA Today
"[A] smart biographical page-turner whose vivid narrative chronicles Fawcett's extraordinary life and harrowing adventures." - Christian Science Monitor "To read "The Lost City of Z" is to feel grateful that Grann himself bothered to set out for the Amazon in search of the bones of an explorer whose body was long ago reclaimed by the jungle."
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Bookforum
"Grann has an extraordinary sense of pacing, and his scenes of forest adventure are dispatched in passages of swift, arresting simplicity." - Caroline Alexander, author of The Bounty and The Endurance "David Grann takes the reader on an extraordinary journey that snakes through expeditionary archives and ends deep in the Amazonian forest. The Lost City of Z is a gripping tale of a lost world and of the magnificent obsession of those who have sought it."
- Erik Larson, author of Thunderstruck, Devil in the White City and Isaac's Storm "David Grann's Lost City of Z is a deeply satisfying revelation--a look into the life and times of one of the last great territorial explorers, P. H. Fawcett, and his search for a lost city in the Amazon. I mean, what could be better--obsession, mystery, deadly insects, shrunken heads, suppurating wounds, hostile tribesmen--all for us to savor in our homes, safely before the fire."
- Charles Mann, author of 1491 "Few things are better than experiencing a horrendous adventure from the comfort of your own armchair. Hordes of mosquitoes, poison-arrow attacks, bizarre and fatal diseases, spies in starched collars, hidden outposts of Atlantis -- what's not to like? The Lost City of Z is like a wonderful 19th-century tale of exotic danger -- except that David Grann's book is also a sensitively written biographical detective story, a vest pocket history of exploration, and a guide to the new archaeological research that is exploding our preconceptions of the Amazon and its peoples."
- Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea "The Amazon has had many chroniclers but few who can match David Grann's grasp of history, science, and especially narrative. Shifting seamlessly between the past and present, THE LOST CITY OF Z is a riveting, totally absorbing real-life adventure story."
- Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point "The story of Z goes to the heart of the central questions of our age. In the battle between man and a hostile environment, who wins? A fascinating and brilliant book."
- Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers "What a wild and adventurous life! In the deft storytelling hands of David Grann, explorer Percy Fawcett emerges as one of the most ambitious, colorful, just plain intrepid figures ever to set foot in the New World. Part Indiana Jones, part Livingstone, and part Kit Carson, Fawcett has found his perfect biographer in Grann, who has gamely endured every conceivable Amazonia
