In 1925, explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on his most ambitious adventure yet: finding the fabled lost city of gold — aka El Dorado — or, to him, simply the enigmatic Z. In trying to solve one of mankind’s greatest mysteries, he inadvertently created another, as he disappeared in the South American jungles and was never heard from again.
His vanishing act prompted scores of rescue efforts, during which an estimated 100 people lost their lives as well. Today, the fascination with Fawcett continues, and that includes NEW YORKER writer David Grann, who tells the whole story — or as much as is known — in THE LOST CITY OF Z: A TALE OF DEADLY OBSESSION IN THE AMAZON.
It’s difficult to believe that in the 1920s — not that long ago, really — people bought into the idea of a city of riches, but the unknown proved to be an irresistible to lure to Fawcett, who, until his fateful final trip, seemed immune to the dangers of the jungle that felled so many others, including that of his own parties.
As Grann reconstructs each of Fawcett’s expeditions, the terrain’s numerous threats stick with you; LOST CITY is a litany of bee-swarming, bat-biting, pus-oozing, limb-swelling maladies. There are hungry piranha; the famous urethra-seeking fish; and socks that are peeled off … along with entire layers of skin. To go into the jungle seemed to equate with acquiring a horrible infection, and yet Fawcett kept finding men to go back with him.
Until that stakes-raising one in 1925, when his party consists entirely of his college-aged son, Jack, and Jack’s best friend, neither of whom had ever embarked on such a trip before. For that, it feels doomed from the get-go, and as Grann leads up to it, your stomach fills with dread, anticipated what we know now to be inevitable.
But that’s only half the story, as Grann, too, is bitten by the Fawcett bug, and becomes as obsessed with finding out what happened to his subject as his subject was to chasing a mere myth. So alternating chapters with the Fawcett adventures are those of Grann himself, venturing into territory that very well may be an alternate world, given his inexperience — he’d never even been camping.
Although obviously the journalist has lived to tell about it — and finding out more than anyone has before, thanks to access to diaries provided by Fawcett’s granddaughter — that doesn’t make LOST CITY any less suspenseful, especially when an early chapter details a similar hunt in the mid-1990s by a father-and-son team that results in their abduction by an Indian tribe.
Like James Swanson’s MANHUNT: THE 12-DAY CHASE FOR LINCOLN’S KILLER, this is the best kind of nonfiction: that which thrills like its fictional counterparts. Without ever having to leave your armchair, Grann takes you a journey to places you’ll never want to go, in a fascinating account of a man who died in pursuit of his dream — both daring and disillusioned. As a work of journalism and adventure, THE LOST CITY OF Z is quite a feat. —Rod Lott
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- Trigger City
- LOST to be found … in bookstores
- The Book of Lost Things
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Arrrgh. So many interesting books on this site, and they’re never available for my Kindle.
Keep up the good work! I love your site.