Indiana Jones adventure movies as a fiction are nothing compared to the reality of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett’s early 20th Century exploratory adventures mapping the unexplored jungle of the Amazon.
Author David Grann possesses an extraordinary ability to meld the gripping biographical history of Fawcett, and that bastion of modern exploration, the Royal Geographical Society, with Grann’s own deep involvement in tracking down where Fawcett disappeared in the Amazon in 1927, never to be seen again. He was seeking a mythical city dubbed Z.
The Lost City of Z is more than a boy’s own adventure tale. It’s a profoundly rich, all-encompassing exploration of the human desire to discover the unknown, for all the wrong reasons as much as the good. It’s a tale of obsession, mystery and loss.
How beautifully, yet honestly Grann outlines the contradictory forces animating the English Victorian mindset of Fawcett’s era and personality, conjoined with the still fervent ‘go West’ spirit of early 1900s America – closed-minded, racial superiority, yet seeming complete openness to the new.
Openness to the new only goes so far. The crux of Grann’s book is a careful and meticulous revelation of how the amateur explorers of Fawcett’s era clung to certain predetermined conceptions of civilisation and society, while still believing the impossible could be true. The countries old myth of El Dorado was inspiration enough to feed Fawcett’s belief, on discovering shards of ancient pottery at high points while trekking the Amazon and observing its many tribes.
Yet there is a willing blindness operating amidst this era of highly competitive men seeking to outdo each other in discovery and capacity to endure and survive deadly jungle diseases, insects and animals. A blindness Grann ever so subtly brings to the fore as the book progresses. What is seen is not necessarily what is true. This is the essential thing which inspired and broke the hearts and minds of Fawcett’s and associate’s families. It motivated the con artists seeking to profit from Fawcett’s disappearance. It is the bedrock of professional scientific endeavours in anthropology and architecture after Fawcett’s era.
The whole history of human folly and wonder is captured in this magnificent book.
Reviewed by David O’Brien
Twitter: @DavidOBupstART
Rating out of 10: 10
Distributed by: Simon & Schuster Australia
Release date: March 2017
RRP: $19.99
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