The Last Bookaneer
  • Published: 18 July 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099572138
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $39.99

The Last Bookaneer

Formats & editions
EBook
14 May 2015
Paperback
18 Jul 2016
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Mystery, celebrity, theft – and a thrilling adventure set at the ends of the earth…

'An ingenious thriller' (Sunday Times) from the author of The Dante Club

A reclusive writer…A stolen manuscript…An adventure at the ends of the earth

On the island of Samoa, a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labours over a new novel. It is rumoured that this may be the author of Treasure Island’s greatest masterpiece.

On the other side of the world this news fires the imaginations of the bookaneers, literary pirates who steal the latest manuscripts by famous writers.

Two adversaries set out for the South Pacific: Pen Davenport, a tortured criminal genius haunted by his past and Belial, his nemesis. Both dream of fortune and immortality with what may be their last and most incredible heist.

The Last Bookaneer thrillingly depicts the lost world of these doomed outlaws, a tropical island with a violent destiny, a brewing colonial war and a reclusive genius directing events from high in his mountain compound.
  • Published: 18 July 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099572138
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $39.99
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About the author

Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl is the internationally bestselling author of The Dante Club, published in more than thirty languages and forty countries. His other books include The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Also by Matthew Pearl

The Technologists
The Last Dickens
The Poe Shadow
The Dante Club
See all

Praise for The Last Bookaneer

An ingenious thriller

Sunday Times

[Pearl’s] clever final twist will surprise the general reader, and please Stevenson scholars

Janette Currie, Independent on Sunday

An enthralling, unusual story, filled with adventure and deceit, that has something interesting to say about the perpetually tangled relationship between literature and commerce

Nick Rennison, BBC History Magazine

A mixture of a classic heist and literary history lesson; the whole Victorian world of letters is cleverly and wittily reimagined

Kate Saunders, The Times

It all plays out as an evocative Polynesian travelogue with all the audacious thievery of a fun heist film

UK Press Syndication

Highly provocative

Mark Lawson, Guardian

Exciting and highly inventive, this fast-paced epic tale of literary skullduggery, criminal artistry, colonial conflict and reclusive writers is delightfully immersive

Good Book Guide

an erudite, thought provoking read, set within a lively, action filled atmosphere

Kathy Jesson, Nudge

Masterly story-telling

Daily Mail

A historical jigsaw puzzle of literary larceny, deception, and derring-do…richly imagined

Boston Globe

Ingenious thriller… Pearl shows an admirable capacity for constructing an intriguing narrative around a nugget of historical information.

Nick Rennison, Sunday Times
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