Brazilian Adventure: The Classic Quest for the Lost City of Z - Softcover

Peter Fleming

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848857918 ISBN 13: 9781848857919

Publisher: I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

This title presents new Foreword by Giles Foden. In the summer of 1925 Colonel Fawcett - soldier, spy and legendary explorer - embarked on a journey into the dark and uncharted heart of Brazil in search of the lost 'City of Z'. He was never seen again. Rumours abounded - that Fawcett had been killed by Indians or wild animals or that he had lost his memory and become chief of a cannibal tribe - and many became obsessed with discovering what had become of him. In 1932, when "The Times" advertised for 'guns' to join an expedition to find Fawcett, the lure was too great for a young Peter Fleming and he immediately signed up, intending to send dazzling dispatches from the jungle. The expedition set out from Sao Paulo and, following tributaries of the Amazon, headed to Fawcett's last-known position. What followed was, in Fleming's words, 'a venture for which Rider Haggard might have written the plot and Conrad designed the scenery'. As the expedition forged its way deeper into the Amazon, disagreements fractured the group and the entire adventure ended in a chaotic race to be the first to report back home. Though the fate of Colonel Fawcett remains a mystery, Peter Fleming's wild escapade in the heart of Brazil has become one of the 20th century's best-loved travel classics.

About this title

Review:

While novelist Ian Fleming is best known for bringing adventurer James Bond to life, his writer brother Peter Fleming, a reporter for The Times of London, survived South American misadventures so challenging they make 007's high-risk existence seem placid in comparison. Lured by a mysterious newspaper ad, Fleming sails with an expedition to Brazil in the 1930s, attempting to answer unresolved questions about a team of explorers, headed by a British Colonel Fawcett, that disappeared in 1925. Once arrived in Brazil, Fleming's expedition falls apart, being equipped with few provisions, erroneous maps, and a despotic leader who proves to be less than fearless in the Amazon jungles. The team soon splits, with former colleagues battling the elements and competing with each other in a race for time and a search for truth. A finely crafted travel tale, with prose that's sometimes as dense and colorful as the jungles it's set in, Brazilian Adventure manages to turn the harrowing into cheeky commentary and barely contained comedy. --Melissa Rossi

From the Publisher:

9 1.5-hour cassettes

About this edition

• Publisher: I B Tauris & Co Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1848857918
• ISBN 13: 9781848857919
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384