The Nautical Chart: A Novel of Adventure - Softcover

Perez-Reverte, Arturo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330486179 ISBN 13: 9780330486170

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

Coy is a suspended sailor with time on his hands, a mariner without a ship. While attending a maritime auction in Barcelona, he meets a beautiful woman who immediately captures his imagination. Tanger Soto, who works for the naval museum in Madrid, is obsessed with Dei Gloria, a Jesuit ship sunk by pirates in the seventeenth century, and now - she hopes - resting on the bottom of the sea off the southern coast of Spain. Tanger uses her imaginative skills with men and her expertise with documents, atlases, and nautical maps to chart the search for lost treasure. Coy is quickly drawn into the search, and before long finds himself falling in love.

As these lively characters follow the course of past sailors, their own journey becomes perilous. Are there secrets dwelling in the depths of the sea? And what of the depths of the heart? This highly intelligent and meticulously plotted novel combines the richness of atmosphere we have come to expect from Perez-Reverte with the romance and mystery of the sea found in the novels of Melville, Conrad, and O'Brian. An unforgettable adventure.

'A classic of its genre, equal to the best of Eric Ambler and Patrick O'Brian - and, beyond genre, not far below the levels and depths plumbed by Melville and Conrad themselves . . . In a virtually perfect fusion of absorbing action and precise, intricate characterisation, Perez-Reverte magically sustains the tension and suspense over a span of almost 500 pages' Kirkus Reviews

About this title

Review:

The fifth novel from the much acclaimed Spanish literary magician Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Nautical Chart, is (the subtitle tells us) "a novel of adventure", and this vivid and colourful tale of lost treasure, love and betrayal on the high seas is a work that conjures the shade of past masters of nautical adventure. Conrad, Melville and Stevenson are in this heady brew, but not one of those masters ever produced something quite as rich and strange as Pérez-Reverte's utterly individual narrative--although it certainly won't be to every taste.

A beautiful woman named Tánger Soto is at the centre of The Nautical Chart. Nearly 230 years after it went to the bottom, Tánger has uncovered the location of a brigantine called the Dei Gloria, a significant ship of the Jesuit brethren's fleet sunk by pirates in the 17th century. Working for the Naval Museum in Madrid, she keeps her discovery clandestine until she is able to enlist the aid of the laconic seaman Manuel Coy at a maritime auction in Barcelona. He is persuaded to join her on a wild treasure hunt off the southern coast of Spain, fully aware that this is much more than a simple search-and-recover mission, and that Tánger is as full of secrets as the sunken vessel they are tracking down. Coy is a suspended sailor with nothing to do, a mariner without a ship. Tánger utilises her singular manipulative skills with men and her expertise with documents, atlases, and nautical maps to chart the search for the lost treasure. Coy is bewitched by his fiercely determined companion, and before long finds himself falling in love. Along with El Piloto, the canny old man of the sea whose sailboat they chart, they head into perilous seas that promise fortune--or death.

The plotting of this mélange of mystery, love and betrayal is an ever-surprising crossbreed between the adventure tale and the literary novel, constantly (and delightfully) wrong-footing the reader at every turn. Pérez-Reverte utilises his experience as a television journalist who has reported on some of the world's most dangerous crises to ensure that the reader's pulse is often racing, but (as in such earlier novels as The Seville Communion and The Fencing Master it's his powerfully evocative prose that commands our attention. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

'A classic of its genre, equal to the best of Eric Ambler and Patrick O'Brian - and, beyond genre, not far below the levels and depths plumbed by Melville and Conrad themselves... In a virtually perfect fusion of absorbing action and precise, intricate characterisation, Perez-Reverte magically sustains the tension and suspense over a span of almost 500 pages' Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0330486179
• ISBN 13: 9780330486170
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480