"The Lost City of Z" by David Grann

A true story which reads like an adventure from the pen of Rider Haggard or Conan Doyle.Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, one time spy and legendary British explorer of the Amazon jungle, travels with his son and his son's best friend into the rain forest in search of a mythical city which sounds like El Dorado but which he refers to as Z. The little party disappears. What has happened to them? Over the years many go to seek them; many fail to return. This brilliant book is a biography of the eccentric colonel, a history of white colonial exploration of the Amazon, an investigation into what might have happened to him, a search for Z, and a wonderful analysis of obsession.

If nothing else it has made me NEVER EVER want to venture into an insect ridden swamp. The list of predators was awesome. Not just hostile Indians with poison tipped arrows who seek to enslave you, or torture you, or kill you, or cannibalise you. Not just Piranhas but fish that lodge themselves into your ureter causing such pain that penilectomy is required. Not just mosquitoes and death from malaria but a bug that 'kisses' you on the lips inserting a protoplasm that, in the next twenty years, will cause your heart or your brain to swell fatally. Not just maggots who eat you from the inside out but vampire bats.

October 2011; 275 pages

Other books about exploration and explorers, and travel, that are reviewed in this blog, may be found here.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God