I had just finished reading The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon last weekend when my SO and I went to see The Belko Experiment. During the previews, I was absolutely shocked to see a trailer for a film adaptation of Z starring Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson. (Check out the trailers for The Belko Experiment and The Lost City of Z here and here, as I enjoyed the former and will be looking forward to the latter.) I had no idea that a film of The Lost City of Z would be coming out when I began reading the book. Rather, I had recently picked it up used at a favorite secondhand bookstore on the recommendation of my dad, who read it years ago when it first came out. Dad is one of my main influences when it comes to my love of literature — he still reads voraciously despite his current battle with a terminal neurodegenerative illness. At any rate, I was glad to give a book that he loved a try.
The Lost City of Z is nonfiction and reads part-biography, part travelogue, and part mystery. The main text tells the life story of Colonel Percy Fawcett, one of the “last great explorers” of the Victorian Era who, along with his colleagues of the UK’s Royal Geographical Society, made it their mission to complete Britain’s map of the world. While other explorers conquered the polar regions or the savannahs of Africa, Fawcett set his sights on the Amazonian rainforest, achieving great renown for his contributions to geographical understanding at the time.
As Fawcett reached middle age, however, he developed an interest in local legends of a great ancient civilization that was said to have once dwelt in the rainforest. These folk tales flew in the face of prevailing scientific theories of the day, which not only held that the rainforests were inhospitable to the development of agriculture and large cities, but also that the indigenous American peoples were intellectually incapable of forming complex societies. Fawcett gradually became obsessed with discovering the fabled civilization, which he nicknamed “Z,” and eventually mounted an expedition into the Amazonian interior with his eldest son and his son’s best friend. The three entered the jungle in 1925 and were never seen again.
Grann skillfully interweaves this biography of Fawcett with efforts to find the Fawcett party in the years after their disappearance. The rescue efforts read like a suspense thriller in places, with one group being held for ransom by a hostile tribe, for example, and another driven out of the jungle in an ambush with locals armed with poison-tipped arrowheads. The author is even drawn into an expedition of his own, leading to a “twist ending” that even I did not expect, but which I found much more satisfying than any other outcome I could have expected from a book with this premise.
Reading The Lost City of Z, it is clear that Grann is a journalist by trade, as he is masterly at pacing and maintaining the reader’s interest. More than many other books I have read recently, I found this one hard to put down and was eager to find out what happened next, a rarity when it comes to nonfiction. I also appreciated Grann’s willingness to share his own humanity with the audience. We learn through the course of the text about Fawcett’s unhealthy obsession with Z, and likewise about the way that countless explorers became obsessed with finding Fawcett once he vanished. Grann is candid with the reader in explaining that while at first this was “just another article” for him, as he continued to investigate the story, he too felt the pull of obsession drawing him into the search for Fawcett and Z. This connection between Grann and Fawcett added another level of authenticity to the novel that was well appreciated.
In conclusion, I would recommend The Lost City of Z to those who are interested in trying nonfiction, as this is a good example of accessible nonfiction that reads like a page-turner. Z is also an excellent read for people who have an interest in The Age of Exploration, as it alludes to many other explorers of the day and has extensive annotations that can give you a jump-start.
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