Reviews and Praise
Filter reviews only for: The Devil and Sherlock Holmes The Lost City of Z
“The Lost City of Z is [Grann’s] winning first book. Like others before him, Grann became fascinated by the Fawcett legend and the city he was looking for, “Z,” as Fawcett called it, his own private El Dorado. Fawcett had a reputation for being fearless, capable of wading into a rain of poison arrows to make peace with the warriors who were firing them. He traveled light, living off the land, and he traveled fast. For years after he disappeared, rumors emerged from the jungle of blond-haired, blue-eyed children, supposedly his offsprig, being spotted in tribal enclaves.
What makes Grann’s book different is his access to diaries and correspondence, obtained from Fawcett’s grandchildren, that no researcher had seen before…”
— National Geographic Adventure on The Lost City of Z
“Thankfully, for those of us who secretly live and breath for the swashbuckling adventure tale, every now and then a book comes along that renews our faith in the epic quest narrative, its ability to inform and enlighten even as it feeds our most primal need for dramatic amusement. The Lost City of Z, by New Yorker staff writer David Grann, succeeds tremendously in these pursuits, even though its very subject matter heralds the death of the grand old era of geographic exploration that inspired so many gripping yarns ... During his research, Grann serendipitously uncovers hidden clues as to the real whereabouts of the legendary Z, a secret the increasingly paranoid Fawcett kept even from his wife. Slowly, the narrative becomes equal parts detective story, travel memoir and biography of a fanatic, as Grann inches toward his astonishing conclusion. Fawcett was searching for the remains of a lost Amazonian metropolis, a holy grail of sorts that would turn archeology on its head. And in Fawcett, Grann has stumbled upon the holy grail of narrative biography: a domineering, near-invincible central character driven, it seems, by divine providence. ... But Fawcett is even more riveting because he represents the end of an era. He was the last of the minimalist Victorian explorers to be funded by the RGS, a man who once befriended a violent tribe of Indians by wading straight into their rain of arrows, a bullish survivor who used to recite Romantic poetry as he trudged through lawless lands ... Fawcett may never have found Z, but as an exhausted and fear-stricken Grann eventually discovers, he was entirely right to believe in its existence.”
— The Globe and Mail
“A riveting adventure-mystery in the tradition of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.”
— Toronto Star
“Immensely entertaining ... The Lost City of Z is one of those books that are impossible to classify. It’s part biography, part detective story, with a sprinkling of the absurd, along with a crackling travel narrative of a naive North American in the jungle. Grann gives us a glimpse of the vanished age of exploration, when Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, and David Livingstone penetrated the African jungle to discover Victoria Falls for Europeans, then, in turn, was found by Henry Stanley, author of that quote that personified that plucky age: ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume.’ But in addition, Grann, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, that symbol of urban sophistication, also gives us a suspenseful, often very funny account of his own trek as a complete amateur into the ‘green hell’ of the Amazon to try to retrace Fawcett’s last journey.”
— The Montreal Gazette
“A remarkable story of adventure, fantasy and discovery.”
— Marin Independent Journal
“A ripping good narrative of obsession. [Grann] keeps his readers on edge as poison arrows fill the air.”
— Dayton Daily News