The Wine-Dark Sea
Patrick O'Brian
(Author)
Description
At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue a heavy American privateer through the Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean water reminds Stephen of Homer's famous description, but it also portends a spectacular submarine volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an indelible impression on the reader's imagination. Their ship, the Surprise, is now also a privateer, the better to escape diplomatic complications from Stephen's mission, which is to ignite the revolutionary tinder of South America. Jack will survive a desperate open-boat journey and come face to face with his illegitimate black son; Stephen, caught up in the aftermath of his failed coup, will flee for his life into the high, frozen wastes of the Andes; and Patrick O'Brian's brilliantly detailed narrative will reunite them at last in a breathtaking chase through storm seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, where the hunters suddenly become the hunted. This is storytelling without models or equals in recent literature; critics have noted in O'Brian's great Aubrey/Maturin epic, now sixteen volumes in length, haunting echoes of such writers as Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, and Jane Austen. Some readers will respond to the undeniable excitement of the chases, storms, and battles, others to the precision of language, or the humor, or the wealth of erudition in Maturin's researches and conversations. But the truest mark of O'Brian's stature as a novelist may be the great number of readers who find fresh delights and deeper resonances in rereading his novels.Product Details
Price
$15.95
$14.83
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date
October 17, 1994
Pages
352
Dimensions
5.72 X 8.16 X 0.68 inches | 0.69 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780393312447
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O'Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.
Reviews
Addictively readable.
lf Jane Austen had written rousing sea yarns, she would have produced something very close to the prose of Patrick O'Brian.
They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. . . there are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey.
There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his.--Stephen Becker
I haven't read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O'Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn't stop.--E. O. Wilson
The best historical novels ever written... On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives.--Richard Snow
It has been something of a shock to find myself--an inveterate reader of girl books--obsessed with Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic-era historical novels... What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love.--Tamar Lewin
I devoured Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog.--Christopher Hitchens
[O'Brian's] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today's putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade.--David Mamet
The Aubrey-Maturin series... far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.--Ken Ringle
O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century.--George Will
Gripping and vivid... a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.--A. S. Byatt
Patrick O'Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.--James Hamilton-Paterson
lf Jane Austen had written rousing sea yarns, she would have produced something very close to the prose of Patrick O'Brian.
They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. . . there are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey.
There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his.--Stephen Becker
I haven't read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O'Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn't stop.--E. O. Wilson
The best historical novels ever written... On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives.--Richard Snow
It has been something of a shock to find myself--an inveterate reader of girl books--obsessed with Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic-era historical novels... What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love.--Tamar Lewin
I devoured Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog.--Christopher Hitchens
[O'Brian's] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today's putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade.--David Mamet
The Aubrey-Maturin series... far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.--Ken Ringle
O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century.--George Will
Gripping and vivid... a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.--A. S. Byatt
Patrick O'Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.--James Hamilton-Paterson
