“A smart biographical page-turner.” - USA Today Grann makes abundantly clear in this fascinating, epic story of exploration and obsession, the lethal attraction of the Amazon mystery remains strong.”- The Boston Globe Impressively researched and skillfully crafted. 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. Grann treats us to a harrowing reconstruction of Fawcett’s forays into the Amazonian jungle, as well as an evocative rendering of the vanished age of exploration.” -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The Lost City of Z is at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd.
Reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller. 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, being irresistibly 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 complex, enthralling narrative.
Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett’s party and the lost City of Z. Then he and his expedition vanished.įawcett’s fate-and the tantalizing clues he left behind about “Z”-became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his twenty-one-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilization-which he dubbed “Z”-existed. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions helped inspire Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humankind. For centuries Europeans believed the world’s largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. In 1925 Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. 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?