The Lost City of Z

David Grann

Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett was the last of a breed of great British explorers who ventured into ‘blank spots’ on the map with little more than a machete, a compass and an unwavering sense of purpose. In 1925, one of the few remaining blank spots in the world was the Amazon. Fawcett believed the impenetrable jungle held a secret to a large, complex civilization like El Dorado, which he christened ‘City of Z’. When he and his son set out to find it, hoping to make one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history, they warned that none should follow them in the event that they did not return. They vanished without a trace. In The Lost City of Z, David Grann ventures into the hazardous world of the Amazon to retrace the footsteps of Colonel Fawcett and his followers, in a bracing attempt to solve one of the greatest mysteries. It is an irresistibly readable adventure story, a subtle examination of the strange and often violent encounters between Europeans and Amazonian tribes and a tale of lethal obsession.

First published:: 2009
Published by:: Simon and Schuster
Length:: Hardcover 339 pages

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About the author

David Grann is an American literary journalist and best-selling author. He began his career in 1994 as a copy editor at The Hill, a Washington D.C. based newspaper covering the United States Congress. Since then he has also worked at the New Yorker and written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard. Grann currently lives in New York with his wife Kyra Darnton, a television producer, and their two children.