Physical description: 413p ; 23cm. Summary: A historical story featuring Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin. Their comfortable existence as country gentlemen is shattered as Jack is overnight reduced to a pauper. But after fleeing to France to escape debtors' prison, he finds himself hunted as Napoleon has ordered the internment of all Englishmen in France. Subject: Great Britain. Royal Navy - Fiction. English fiction - 20th century. Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 - Fiction. Maturin, Stephen - Aubrey, Jack -(Fictitious characters) - Fiction. Debt - Great Britain - Fiction. Fugitives from justice - France - Fiction. Great Britain - History, Naval - 19th century - Fiction. Fiction in English, 1900 - Texts. Historical adventure ; Historical fiction. FICTION / General FICTION / Literary. Genre: Novel, Sea stories. text.
‘...full of the energy that comes from a writer having struck a vein... Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.’
James Hamilton- Paterson
‘You are in for the treat of your lives. Thank God for Patrick O’Brian: his genius illuminates the literature of the English language, and lightens the lives of those who read him.’
Kevin Myers, Irish Times
‘Written with most engaging enthusiasm that can’t fail to give pleasure to anybody who enjoys historical adventure flavoured with more than a dash of realism.’
Sunday Times
‘Liveliness and expertise... the hero is vigorous flesh and blood.’
Observer
‘This book sets him at the very top of his genre’
Mary Renault
