The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
Amazon Exclusive: John Grisham ReviewsThe Lost City of ZSince first publishingA Time to Killin   1988, John Grisham has written twenty novels and one work of nonfiction,The Innocent Man.   His second novel,The Firm, spent 47 weeks on   theNew York Timesbestseller list, becoming the bestselling novel of 1991. The success ofThe Pelican Brief, which hit number one on theNew York Timesbestseller list, andThe   Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation as the master of the legal   thriller.   His most recent novel,The   Associate, was published in January 2009. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review ofThe Lost   City of Z:In April of 1925, a legendary British explorer named Percy Fawcett launched his final   expedition into the depths of the Amazon in Brazil.  His destination was the lost city of El Dorado, the   “City of Gold,” an ancient kingdom of great sophistication, architecture, and culture that, for some   reason, had vanished.  The idea of El Dorado had captivated anthropologists, adventurers, and scientists   for 400 years, though there was no evidence it ever existed.  Hundreds of expeditions had gone looking for   it.  Thousands of men had perished in the jungles searching for it.  Fawcett himself had barely survived   several previous expeditions and was more determined than ever to find the lost city with its streets and   temples of gold.The world was watching.  Fawcett, the last of the great Victorian adventurers, was financed by the   Royal Geographical Society in London, the world’s foremost repository of research gathered by explorers.    Fawcett, then age 57, had proclaimed for decades his belief in the City of Z, as he had nicknamed it.  His   writings, speeches, and exploits had captured the imagination of millions, and reports of his last   expedition were front page news.His expeditionary force consisted of three men--himself, his 21-year-old son Jack, and one of Jack’s   friends.  Fawcett believed that only a small group had any chance of surviving the horrors of the Amazon.    He had seen large forces decimated by malaria, insects, snakes, poison darts, starvation, and insanity.    He knew better.  He and his two companions would travel light, carry their own supplies, eat off the land,   pose no threat to the natives, and endure months of hardship in their search for the Lost City of Z.They were never seen again.  Fawcett’s daily dispatches trickled to a stop.  Months passed with no   word.  Because he had survived several similar forays into the Amazon, his family and friends considered   him to be near super-human.  As before, they expected Fawcett to stumble out of the jungle, bearded and   emaciated and announcing some fantastic discovery.  It did not happen.Over the years, the search for Fawcett became more alluring than the search for El Dorado itself.    Rescue efforts, from the serious to the farcical, materialized in the years that followed, and hundreds of   others lost their lives in the search.  Rewards were posted.  Psychics were brought in by the family.    Articles and books were written.  For decades the legend of Percy Fawcett refused to die.The great mystery of what happened to Fawcett has never been solved, perhaps until now.  In 2004,   author David Grann discovered the story while researching another one.  Soon, like hundreds before him, he   became obsessed with the legend of the colorful adventurer and his baffling disappearance. Grann, a   lifelong New Yorker with an admitted aversion to camping and mountain climbing, a lousy sense of   direction, and an affinity for take-out food and air conditioning, soon found himself in the jungles of   the Amazon.  What he found there, some 80 years after Fawcett’s disappearance, is a startling conclusion   to this absorbing narrative.The Lost City of Zis a riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure.(Photo © Maki Galimberti)A Q&A with Author David GrannQuestion:When did you first stumble upon the story of Percy Fawcett and his search for an   ancient civilization in the Amazon—and when did you realize this particular story had you in “the grip”?David Grann:While I was researching a story on the mysterious death of the world’s greatest   Sherlock Holmes expert, I came upon a reference to Fawcett’s role in inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle’s novelThe Lost World.   Curious, I plugged Fawcett’s name into a newspaper database and was amazed by the headlines that appeared,   including “THREE MEN FACE CANNIBALS IN RELIC QUEST” and tribesmen “Seize Movie Actor Seeking to Rescue   Fawcett.” As I read each story, I became more and more curious--about how Fawcett’s quest for a lost city   and his disappearance had captivated the world; how for decades hundreds of scientists and explorers had   tried to find evidence of Fawcett’s missing party and the City of Z; and how countless seekers had   disappeared or died from starvation, diseases, attacks by wild animals, or poisonous arrows. What   intrigued me most, though, was the notion of Z. For years most scientists had considered the brutal   conditions in the largest jungle in the world inimical to humankind, but more recently some archeologists   had begun to question this longstanding view and believed that a sophisticated civilization like Z might   have existed. Such a discovery would challenge virtually everything that was believed about the nature of   the Amazon and what the Americas looked liked before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Suddenly, the   story had every tantalizing element--mystery, obsession, death, madness--as well as great intellectual   stakes. Still, I probably didn’t realize I was fully in the story’s “grip” until I told my wife that I   planned to take out an extra life insurance policy and follow Fawcett’s trail into the Amazon.Q:Tell us about the discovery of Fawcett’s previously unpublished diaries and logbooks.DG:Researching the book often felt like a kind of treasure hunt and nothing was more exciting   than coming across these materials in an old chest in the house of one of Fawcett’s grandchildren.   Fawcett, who had been a British spy, was extremely secretive about his search for Z--in part because he   didn’t want his rivals to discover the lost city before he did and in part because he feared that too many   people would die if they tried to follow in his wake. These old, crumbling diaries and logbooks held   incredible clues to both Fawcett’s life and death; what’s more, they revealed a key to his clandestine   route to the Lost City of Z.Q:In an attempt to retrace Fawcett’s journey, many scientists and explorers have faced madness,   kidnapping, and death. Did you ever hesitate to go to the Amazon?DG:I probably should have been more hesitant, especially after reading some of the diaries of   members of other parties that had scoured the Amazon for a lost city. One seeker of El Dorado described   reaching a state of “privation so great that we were eating nothing but leather, belts and soles of shoes,   cooked with certain herbs, with the result that so great was our weakness that we could not remain   standing.” In that expedition alone, some four thousand men perished. Other explorers resorted to   cannibalism. One searcher went so mad he stabbed his own child, whispering, “Commend thyself to God, my   daughter, for I am about to kill thee.” But to be honest, even after reading these accounts, I was so   consumed by the story that I did not think much about the consequences--and one of the themes I try to   explore in the book is the lethal nature of obsession.Q:When you were separated from your guide Paolo on the way to the Kuikuro village and seemingly   lost and alone in the jungle, what was going through your mind?DG:Besides fear, I kept wondering what the hell I was doing on such a mad quest.Q:Paolo and you made a game of imagining what happened to Fawcett in the Amazon. Without giving   anything away aboutThe Lost City of Z, I was wondering if you came away with any final   conclusions?DG:I don’t want to give too much away; but, after poring over Fawcett’s final letters and   dispatches from the expedition and after interviewing many of the tribes that Fawcett himself had   encountered, I felt as if I had come as close as possible to knowing why Fawcett and his party   vanished.Q:In his praise for your book, Malcolm Gladwell asks a “central question of our age”: “In the   battle between man and a hostile environment, who wins?” Obviously, the jungle has won many times, but it   seems man may be gaining. What are your thoughts on the deforestation taking place in the Amazon?DG:It is a great tragedy. Over the last four decades in Brazil alone, the Amazon has lost some   two hundred and seventy thousand square miles of its original forest cover--an area bigger than France.   Many tribes, including some I visited, are being threatened with extinction. Countless animals and plants,   many of them with potential medicinal purposes, are also vanishing. One of the things that the book   explores is how early Native American societies were often able to overcome their hostile environment   without destroying it. Unfortunately, that has not been the case with the latest wave of trespassers.Q:You began this journey as a man who doesn’t like to camp and has “a terrible sense of   direction and tend[s] to forget where [you are] on the subway and miss[es] [your] stop in Brooklyn.” Are   you now an avid outdoorsman?DG:No. Once was enough for me!Q:Early in the book, you write, “Ever since I was young, I’ve been drawn to mystery and   adventure tales.” What have been some of your favorite books--past and present--that fall into this   category?DG:I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, and every few years go back and read the stories again. I do   the same with many of Joseph Conrad’s novels, includingLord Jim. I’m always   amazed at how he produced quest novels that reflected the Victorian era and yet seem to have been written   with the wisdom of a historian looking back in time. As for more contemporary authors, I read a lot of   crime fiction, especially the works of George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly. I also relish books, such as   Jonathan Lethem’sMotherless   Brooklyn, that cleverly play with this genre. Finally, there are the gripping yarns written by   authors likeJon KrakauerandNathaniel Philbrick-—stories that are   all the more spellbinding because they are true.Q:Brad Pitt and Paramount optionedThe Lost City of Zin the spring. Any updates?DG:They have hired a screenwriter and director and seem to be moving forward at a good   clip.Q:What are you working on now?DG:I recently finished a couple of crime stories forThe New Yorker, including one about   a Polish author who allegedly committed murder and then left clues about the real crime in his novel.   Meanwhile, I’m hoping to find a tantalizing story, likeThe Lost City of Z, that will lead to a new   book.Q:Anything else you’d like to add?DG:Just that I hope that readers will enjoyThe Lost City of Zand find the story of   Fawcett and his quest as captivating as I did.(Photo © Matt Richman)Look InsideThe Lost City of ZClick on thumbnails for larger imagesPercy Harrison Fawcett was considered “the last of the individualist   explorers”—those who ventured into blank spots on the map with little more than a machete, a compass, and   an almost divine sense of purpose.  He is seen here in 1911, the year of his fourth major Amazon   expedition.(Copyright © R. de Montet-Guerin)Fawcett mapping the frontier between Brazil and Bolivia in 1908.(Courtesy of   the Royal Geographical Society)Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice, Fawcett’s main rival, was a multimillionaire “as much   at home in the elegant swirl of Newport society as in the steaming jungles of Brazil.”(Courtesy of   the Royal Geographical Society)A member of Dr. Rice’s 1919-20 expedition deploys a wireless telegraphy set—an   early radio—allowing the party to receive news from the outside world.(Courtesy of the Royal   Geographical Society)