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The Lost City of Z (book)

February 01, 2023

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is a non-fiction book by American author David Grann. Published in 2009, the book recounts the activities of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, disappeared with his son in the Amazon rainforest while looking for the ancient "Lost City of Z". In the book, Grann recounts his own journey into the Amazon, by which he discovered new evidence about how Fawcett may have died.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
Cover of the first US edition
AuthorDavid Grann
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectPercy Fawcett
GenreNon-fiction
PublisherDoubleday
Publication date
February 2009
Media type
  • Print
  • e-book
Pages352
ISBN978-0-385-51353-1
OCLC226038067
918.1/1046 22
LC ClassF2546 .G747 2009

The Lost City of Z was the basis of a 2016 feature film of the same name.

Overview

 
Percy Fawcett in 1911.

As observed by Kirkus Reviews, "Fawcett's exploits in jungles and atop mountains inspired novels such as Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and his character is the tutelary spirit of the Indiana Jones franchise. Fawcett in turn was nurtured by his associations with fabulists such as Doyle and H. Rider Haggard, whose talisman he bore into the Amazonian rainforest."[1]

For decades explorers and scientists have tried to find evidence of Fawcett's party and of the Lost City of Z. Of those, Grann explains, "there are no reliable statistics on the numbers who died. One recent estimate, however, put the total as high as a hundred."[2] (A more historically accurate toll, according to historian John Hemming, is one.)[3]

Grann, a New Yorker magazine staff writer, first wrote about the story in The New Yorker in 2005.[2] The article documents how Grann, working from Fawcett's long-lost diaries, reconstructed the explorer's last journey, including visiting members of the Kalapalo tribe in the Xingu Indigenous Park region of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Kalapalo had apparently preserved an oral history about Fawcett's small party of himself, his son Jack, and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell, who were among the first Europeans the tribe had ever seen.

The oral account said that Fawcett and his party had stayed at their village and, despite warnings about "fierce Indians" who occupied that territory, had headed eastward. The Kalapalos observed smoke from Fawcett's expedition's campfire each evening for five days before it disappeared. As a result, the Kalapalos said they were sure that the fierce Indians had killed them.[2] The article formed the basis for Grann's book.

As a result of Grann's own trek into the Amazon and consultations with archeologists, he also learned that Fawcett may have come upon "Z" without knowing it.[4] Grann reported on excavations by the archeologist Michael Heckenberger at a site in the Amazon Xingu region that might be the long-rumored lost city. The ruins were surrounded by several concentric circular moats, with evidence of palisades that had been described in the folklore and oral history of nearby tribes. Heckenberger also found evidence of wooden structures and roads that cut through the jungle. Black Indian earth showed evidence that humans had added supplements to the soil to increase its fertility to support agriculture.

The settlements and civilization of these people appeared to have lasted long enough for them to have had contact with Europeans. Many died due to new infectious diseases, which may have been carried by some of their usual indigenous trading partners, rather than directly by Europeans. The high rate of fatality of these epidemics disrupted the people and their society: in only a few years, they were so devastated by disease that they had virtually died out.

The earliest conquistadors left records of their glimpses of this civilization, but by the time they tried to explore the rainforest again, the indigenous people were all but gone. The jungle was quickly reclaiming the land.[5]

Reception

The Lost City of Z was reviewed by Rich Cohen in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, who said it was "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."[6] The Washington Post described it as "a thrill ride from start to finish."[7]

Critic Michiko Kakutani ranked it as one of the ten best books of 2009.[8] In her review, Kakutani wrote that it:

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. Mr. 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. . . . Suspenseful. . . Rollicking . . . Fascinating . . . It reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.[9]

At the same time, the book did face some criticism. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Simon Winchester said the book was "captivating" but faulted Grann's credulity, especially his imagined observations of the ruins of "Z" and theorizing about what happened to Fawcett. Winchester wrote, "Oh, please. It is all just too pat, too wanting in healthy skepticism."[10] Hugh Thomson wrote in The Washington Post that Grann's book "is intelligent and nuanced, as one might expect from a New Yorker staff writer. But it is also a source of distortion, as it ignores or inflates much available material on Fawcett."[11] John Hemming dismissed much of the book as hyperbolic in his review for The Times Literary Supplement, concluding, "It is a pity that a writer as good as Grann chose to study this unimportant, disagreeable and ultimately pathetic man. It is an even greater pity that he decided to inflate and distort so much of this sad story."[12]

The book appeared on several "best" and "notable books of the year" lists, including that of Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, Sunday New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, the Providence Journal, The Globe and Mail, Evening Standard, Amazon, and McClatchy Newspapers. Barnes & Noble ranked The Lost City of Z as the single best nonfiction book of 2009.

Awards and honors

Film adaptation

Main article: The Lost City of Z (film)

The Lost City of Z was optioned by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company and Paramount Pictures in 2010. The adaptation, directed by James Gray, who also wrote the screenplay,[13] premiered on October 15, 2016, at the 54th New York Film Festival. The film stars Charlie Hunnam as Percy Fawcett, Sienna Miller as Fawcett's wife, Tom Holland as Jack Fawcett and Robert Pattinson as Henry Costin.[14]

Editions

  • Grann, David (2009). The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51353-1. A paperback edition was released in January 2010.
  • As of this date,[when?] The Lost City of Z has been translated into more than 25 languages.[citation needed]

See also

Further reading

  • Col. P. H. Fawcett (1953). Lost Trails, Lost Cities. Selected and arranged from his manuscripts, letters, and other records by Brian Fawcett. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co. LCCN 53006980. OL 6134053M.
  • Langer, Johnni (2002). "A Cidade Perdida da Bahia: mito e arqueologia no Brasil Império". Revista Brasileira de História (in Portuguese). 22 (43): 126–152. doi:10.1590/S0102-01882002000100008. ISSN 1806-9347.

References

  1. ^ "THE LOST CITY OF Z: A TALE OF DEADLY OBSESSION IN THE AMAZON," Kirkus Reviews. (Dec. 1, 2008): "The British explorer Percy Fawcett’s exploits in jungles and atop mountains inspired novels such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World".
  2. ^ a b c Grann, David (September 19, 2005). "The Lost City of Z". The New Yorker. LXXXI (28): 56–81. ISSN 0028-792X.
  3. ^ Hemming, John (1 April 2017). "The Lost City of Z is a very long way from a true story and I should know". The Spectator.
  4. ^ Grann, David. Lost City of Z, 2009, pp. 270–272.
  5. ^ Biello, David. (August 28, 2008). "Ancient Amazon Actually Highly Urbanized", Scientific American.
  6. ^ Cohen, Rich. (February 26, 2009)."On the Road to El Dorado." The New York Times.
  7. ^ Arana, Marie. (March 6, 2009). "Lost in the Jungle." Washington Post.
  8. ^ Kakutani, Michiko. (November 26, 2009). "Michiko Kakutani's Top 10 Books of 2009." The New York Times.
  9. ^ Kakutani, Michiko. (March 16, 2009). "An Explorer Drawn to, and Eventually Swallowed by, the Amazon." The New York Times.
  10. ^ Winchester, Simon. (February 27, 2009). "The Endless Allure of El Dorado." Wall Street Journal.
  11. ^ Thomson, Hugh. "The hero of ‘The Lost City of Z’ was no hero", The Washington Post, April 12, 2009.
  12. ^ Hemming, John. "Gung ho ho. 'Lost City of Z, The' by Grann, David (author)", The Times Literary Supplement. June 05, 2009; pg. 7-8; Issue 5540.
  13. ^ "The Immigrant: James Gray on Being Beloved By the French". CraveOnline. 2014-05-14. Retrieved 2017-05-16.
  14. ^ Dockterman, Eliana (February 4, 2015). "Charlie Hunnam Replaces Benedict Cumberbatch in The Lost City of Z". Retrieved May 3, 2015.

External links

  • Excerpt of the first chapter in The Wall Street Journal
  • "The search for a mythical lost city", NPR interview with David Grann
  • Anonymous. Manuscript 512 (1754), about the first expedition to The Lost City (Portuguese).
  • (Video) The Lost City of Z, author interview on Fora.tv

February 01, 2023
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The Lost City of Z A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is a non fiction book by American author David Grann Published in 2009 the book recounts the activities of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who in 1925 disappeared with his son in the Amazon rainforest while looking for the ancient Lost City of Z In the book Grann recounts his own journey into the Amazon by which he discovered new evidence about how Fawcett may have died The Lost City of Z A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the AmazonCover of the first US editionAuthorDavid GrannCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishSubjectPercy FawcettGenreNon fictionPublisherDoubledayPublication dateFebruary 2009Media typePrint e bookPages352ISBN978 0 385 51353 1OCLC226038067Dewey Decimal918 1 1046 22LC ClassF2546 G747 2009The Lost City of Z was the basis of a 2016 feature film of the same name Contents 1 Overview 2 Reception 3 Awards and honors 4 Film adaptation 5 Editions 6 See also 7 Further reading 8 References 9 External linksOverview Edit Percy Fawcett in 1911 As observed by Kirkus Reviews Fawcett s exploits in jungles and atop mountains inspired novels such as Arthur Conan Doyle s The Lost World and his character is the tutelary spirit of the Indiana Jones franchise Fawcett in turn was nurtured by his associations with fabulists such as Doyle and H Rider Haggard whose talisman he bore into the Amazonian rainforest 1 For decades explorers and scientists have tried to find evidence of Fawcett s party and of the Lost City of Z Of those Grann explains there are no reliable statistics on the numbers who died One recent estimate however put the total as high as a hundred 2 A more historically accurate toll according to historian John Hemming is one 3 Grann a New Yorker magazine staff writer first wrote about the story in The New Yorker in 2005 2 The article documents how Grann working from Fawcett s long lost diaries reconstructed the explorer s last journey including visiting members of the Kalapalo tribe in the Xingu Indigenous Park region of the state of Mato Grosso Brazil The Kalapalo had apparently preserved an oral history about Fawcett s small party of himself his son Jack and Jack s friend Raleigh Rimell who were among the first Europeans the tribe had ever seen The oral account said that Fawcett and his party had stayed at their village and despite warnings about fierce Indians who occupied that territory had headed eastward The Kalapalos observed smoke from Fawcett s expedition s campfire each evening for five days before it disappeared As a result the Kalapalos said they were sure that the fierce Indians had killed them 2 The article formed the basis for Grann s book As a result of Grann s own trek into the Amazon and consultations with archeologists he also learned that Fawcett may have come upon Z without knowing it 4 Grann reported on excavations by the archeologist Michael Heckenberger at a site in the Amazon Xingu region that might be the long rumored lost city The ruins were surrounded by several concentric circular moats with evidence of palisades that had been described in the folklore and oral history of nearby tribes Heckenberger also found evidence of wooden structures and roads that cut through the jungle Black Indian earth showed evidence that humans had added supplements to the soil to increase its fertility to support agriculture The settlements and civilization of these people appeared to have lasted long enough for them to have had contact with Europeans Many died due to new infectious diseases which may have been carried by some of their usual indigenous trading partners rather than directly by Europeans The high rate of fatality of these epidemics disrupted the people and their society in only a few years they were so devastated by disease that they had virtually died out The earliest conquistadors left records of their glimpses of this civilization but by the time they tried to explore the rainforest again the indigenous people were all but gone The jungle was quickly reclaiming the land 5 Reception EditThe Lost City of Z was reviewed by Rich Cohen in the Sunday New York Times Book Review who said it was 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 Garcia Marquez 6 The Washington Post described it as a thrill ride from start to finish 7 Critic Michiko Kakutani ranked it as one of the ten best books of 2009 8 In her review Kakutani wrote that it 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 Mr 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 Suspenseful Rollicking Fascinating It reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage 9 At the same time the book did face some criticism Writing for The Wall Street Journal Simon Winchester said the book was captivating but faulted Grann s credulity especially his imagined observations of the ruins of Z and theorizing about what happened to Fawcett Winchester wrote Oh please It is all just too pat too wanting in healthy skepticism 10 Hugh Thomson wrote in The Washington Post that Grann s book is intelligent and nuanced as one might expect from a New Yorker staff writer But it is also a source of distortion as it ignores or inflates much available material on Fawcett 11 John Hemming dismissed much of the book as hyperbolic in his review for The Times Literary Supplement concluding It is a pity that a writer as good as Grann chose to study this unimportant disagreeable and ultimately pathetic man It is an even greater pity that he decided to inflate and distort so much of this sad story 12 The book appeared on several best and notable books of the year lists including that of Entertainment Weekly The Washington Post The Boston Globe Publishers Weekly Sunday New York Times The Christian Science Monitor Bloomberg the Providence Journal The Globe and Mail Evening Standard Amazon and McClatchy Newspapers Barnes amp Noble ranked The Lost City of Z as the single best nonfiction book of 2009 Awards and honors EditNew York Times bestseller Nonfiction 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize shortlist 2009 Amazon s Best Books of the Year 58 2009 Publishers Weekly s Top 10 Best Books 2009 Publishers Weekly s Best Books 2009 New York Times Notable Book of the Year Nonfiction 2009 ALA Notable Books for Adults 2010 Indies Choice Book Award Adult Non fiction 2010 Globe and Mail Best Book Travel 2009 The Essential Man s Library 50 Non Fiction Adventure Books Christian Science Monitor Best Book Nonfiction 2009 Film adaptation EditMain article The Lost City of Z film The Lost City of Z was optioned by Brad Pitt s Plan B production company and Paramount Pictures in 2010 The adaptation directed by James Gray who also wrote the screenplay 13 premiered on October 15 2016 at the 54th New York Film Festival The film stars Charlie Hunnam as Percy Fawcett Sienna Miller as Fawcett s wife Tom Holland as Jack Fawcett and Robert Pattinson as Henry Costin 14 Editions EditGrann David 2009 The Lost City of Z A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon Doubleday ISBN 978 0 385 51353 1 A paperback edition was released in January 2010 As of this date when The Lost City of Z has been translated into more than 25 languages citation needed See also EditBrazilian Adventure 1933 by Peter Fleming travel literature about a search for Fawcett Road to Zanzibar 1941 movie loosely based on the search for Fawcett Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils 1991 Indiana Jones novel with a plot to find FawcettFurther reading EditCol P H Fawcett 1953 Lost Trails Lost Cities Selected and arranged from his manuscripts letters and other records by Brian Fawcett New York Funk amp Wagnalls Co LCCN 53006980 OL 6134053M Langer Johnni 2002 A Cidade Perdida da Bahia mito e arqueologia no Brasil Imperio Revista Brasileira de Historia in Portuguese 22 43 126 152 doi 10 1590 S0102 01882002000100008 ISSN 1806 9347 References Edit THE LOST CITY OF Z A TALE OF DEADLY OBSESSION IN THE AMAZON Kirkus Reviews Dec 1 2008 The British explorer Percy Fawcett s exploits in jungles and atop mountains inspired novels such as Arthur Conan Doyle s The Lost World a b c Grann David September 19 2005 The Lost City of Z The New Yorker LXXXI 28 56 81 ISSN 0028 792X Hemming John 1 April 2017 The Lost City of Z is a very long way from a true story and I should know The Spectator Grann David Lost City of Z 2009 pp 270 272 Biello David August 28 2008 Ancient Amazon Actually Highly Urbanized Scientific American Cohen Rich February 26 2009 On the Road to El Dorado The New York Times Arana Marie March 6 2009 Lost in the Jungle Washington Post Kakutani Michiko November 26 2009 Michiko Kakutani s Top 10 Books of 2009 The New York Times Kakutani Michiko March 16 2009 An Explorer Drawn to and Eventually Swallowed by the Amazon The New York Times Winchester Simon February 27 2009 The Endless Allure of El Dorado Wall Street Journal Thomson Hugh The hero of The Lost City of Z was no hero The Washington Post April 12 2009 Hemming John Gung ho ho Lost City of Z The by Grann David author The Times Literary Supplement June 05 2009 pg 7 8 Issue 5540 The Immigrant James Gray on Being Beloved By the French CraveOnline 2014 05 14 Retrieved 2017 05 16 Dockterman Eliana February 4 2015 Charlie Hunnam Replaces Benedict Cumberbatch in The Lost City of Z Retrieved May 3 2015 External links EditExcerpt of the first chapter in The Wall Street Journal The search for a mythical lost city NPR interview with David Grann Anonymous Manuscript 512 1754 about the first expedition to The Lost City Portuguese Video The Lost City of Z author interview on Fora tv Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Lost City of Z book amp oldid 1134824134, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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