Leaving behind them a Europe still taking stock after the definitive battle of Waterloo, Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin set sail for Chile. But even with the newly minted peace, life at sea remains beset with danger and imminent disaster, and the political turmoil of the South American continent is equal to any threat they have yet faced.
Out of loss – of purpose, of love – can the two friends rescue what they most desire?
‘Beyond his superbly elegant writing, wit and originality, [O’Brian] showed an understanding of the nature of a floating world at the mercy of the wind and sea which has never been surpassed.’
MAX HASTINGS, Evening Standard
‘From the opening page I was addicted to what I judge to be one of the greatest cycles of storytelling in the English language.’
WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE, Daily Telegraph
Patrick O’Brian was born in 1914 and published his first book, Caesar, when he was only fifteen. In the 1960s he began work on the idea that, over the next four decades, evolved into the twenty-novel long Aubrey–Maturin series (with an extra unfinished volume published posthumously). In 1995 he was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He died in January 2000 at the age of 85.