A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
This is the first book by David Grann, who has written for the New Yorker since 2003.
The Topic: The Lost City of Z is the story of Percy Harrison Fawcett, an indefatigable British adventurer who launched one of the last great expeditions of the 20th century but ultimately met a mysterious end while trying to find the golden city of El Dorado (or as he dubbed it, "Z.") But it is also the story of David Grann, the not-quite-so-formidable New Yorker writer who became nearly as obsessed with Fawcett as Fawcett was with Z—to the point of attempting to retrace Fawcett’s trail through the Amazon (a mission which, Grann asserts, has claimed at least 100 lives). Given Fawcett’s larger-than-life story, there is no shortage of action here, but Grann’s farcical retread of Fawcett’s tragedy also provides the story with comic relief and reflection.
Doubleday. 352 pages. $27.50. ISBN: 0385513534
Denver Post
"When you were younger did you love reading novels of dangerous exploits in fabulous, far-off parts of this world or others—H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne and Lost World kind of stuff? If so, and if you want to recapture some of that blood-stirring reading experience, you need look no further than David Grann’s The Lost City of Z." Roger K. Miller
Los Angeles Times
"The reader is taken just as close to Grann as the author is to Fawcett—tantalizingly close but never touching. His findings give us as complete a picture of the city of Z as we’re likely to get, even if Fawcett forever remains brilliantly and maddeningly nowhere to be seen." Karla Starr
USA Today
"In 2004, Grann stumbled upon Fawcett’s story and began researching what he called ‘the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century.’ And that wasn’t overselling the tale. Grann’s The Lost City of Z, his first book, turns that mystery into a smart biographical page-turner whose vivid narrative chronicles Fawcett’s extraordinary life and harrowing adventures." Don Oldenburg
Washington Post
"Although Fawcett’s story cuts through 100 years of complicated history, Grann follows its twists and turns admirably. Thoroughly researched, vividly told, this is a thrill ride from start to finish." Marie Arana
NY Times Book Review
"The book is screwball … a hybrid in which the weak, fear-wracked reporter from the present age confronts the crazed iron men of yore, citizens of a country as grand and gone as the kingdom of the Incas. The result is 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." Rich Cohen
Wall Street Journal
"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. … Mr. Grann’s accounts of his travels in central Brazil—where he had a GPS device and satellite phone, ate freeze-dried chicken teriyaki, traveled in planes and SUVs … are somewhat less successful than his well-wrought and occasionally funny historical account of the Fawcett saga." Simon Winchester
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"The final chapters of the meeting between the two Americans are anti-climactic as the scientist gives the writer an accounting of the ruins. Otherwise, Grann’s book is an interesting, if somewhat breathless, retelling of Fawcett’s life and the other ‘broken heroes on a last-ditch power drive’ who followed." Bob Hoover
Critical Summary
Ever since Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it has been difficult to think of a journey up a river into a jungle as anything but a journey to discover oneself. Similarly, reviewers seemed to find what they wanted in The Lost City of Z, even if some admitted that Grann’s adventures, at times tedious, were not nearly as perilous or as larger-than-life as Fawcett’s. Some critics read it as a boys’ adventure story, tripping over themselves to find adjectives fit for Fawcett’s derring-do. Others preferred to focus on Grann’s somewhat ironic attempt to seek Z himself. And finally, some critics had it both ways, since, by the end of the book, Grann claims to have actually found Z, or something like it, with only British writer Simon Winchester willing to cry "the horror!" at his American colleague’s lack of skepticism.