The Nutmeg of Consolation (Aubrey/Maturin Novels, 14) - Softcover

O'Brian, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1324020547 ISBN 13: 9781324020547

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2022

Synopsis

"[The series shows] a joy in language that jumps from every page…You're in for a wonderful voyage." ―Cutler Durkee, People

Shipwrecked on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies, Captain Aubrey, surgeon and secret intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, and the crew of the Diane fashion a schooner from the wreck. A vicious attack by Malay pirates is repulsed, but the makeshift vessel burns, and they are truly marooned. Their escape from this predicament is one that only the whimsy and ingenuity of Patrick O'Brian―or Stephen Maturin―could devise.

In command now of a new ship, the Nutmeg, Aubrey pursues his interrupted mission. The dreadful penal colony in New South Wales, harrowingly described, is the backdrop to a diplomatic crisis provoked by Maturin's Irish temper, and to a near-fatal encounter with the wildlife of the Australian outback.

About this title

About the Author

One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.

From the Back Cover

Praise for the Aubrey/Maturin Series and Patrick O’Brian

“The best historical novels ever written.”
―Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review

“I love these books.… [They offer] the same sense of lived experience as Hilary Mantel.… They will sweep you away and return you delighted, increased and stunned. If the phrase ‘Napoleonic war fiction’ fills you with anticipation, then you don’t need me to convince you to read [Patrick] O’Brian. But for the rest of you.… [P]lease, just trust me.”
―Nicola Griffith, NPR

“A few books work their way… onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence―witness The Lord of the Rings, or Patrick O’Brian’s sea stories.”
―Ursula K. Le Guin

“Like John LeCarré, [O’Brian] has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from ‘serious’ fiction. O’Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have.”
―Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[Patrick O’Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader… savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity.”
―Eudora Welty

“O’Brian’s eloquent admirers include not merely distinguished critics and reviewers but… thousands upon thousands of fervent readers who thank the gods for him.… [H]is work accomplishes nobly the three grand purposes of art: to entertain, to edify, and to awe.”
―Stephen Becker, Paris Review

“For escapist reading, I especially like the sea novels of Patrick O’Brian.”
―Bill Bryson

“O’Brian’s narrative… provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises―comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O’Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity.”
―A. S. Byatt

“I prefer the Aubrey-Maturin series to all others.… Every book is packed to absolute straining with erudition, wit, history, and thunderous action.”
―Joe Hill

“All of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian [is on my shelves].”
―Mindy Kaling, New York Times

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1324020547
• ISBN 13: 9781324020547
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336