What's your "Lost City of Z"?

I sat down a couple weeks ago to write about “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.” But I ended up getting caught up in reminisces and memories of travels and adventures and my own obsession with foreign places, and had written an entire blog entry by the time I realized I hadn’t written a word about “Z.”

I’d say that’s a pretty good recommendation for the book.

In “Z,” David Grann, a staff writer at the New Yorker, tracks the life and travels of Percy Fawcett, a British adventurer and explorer who became obsessed with finding a mythical El Dorado in the Amazon, that he dubbed “Z.”

Fawcett, with the help of the Royal Geographic Society, spent much of his life searching for the city – and the proof he needed to prove his theory that an advanced, rich civilization once existed in the region.

In the end, he disappeared into that wilderness with his son in 1925 and was never heard from again. Dozens of groups went after them, giving legs to the already sensational and wildly publicized story, and many of them never made it back either.

Whether they were murdered by hostile natives, starved to death in the harsh "counterfeit paradise" of the Amazon, or died from illness, has never been firmly determined.

Fawcett was considered one of the toughest explorers to have ever set foot in the jungle and he knew the region well. As a result the mystery surrounding his disappearance has gripped imaginations for three-quarters of a century.


A number of books and movies have been made – including a new one starring Brad Pitt (which is why he’s been sporting that ratty beard for so long). He was even a character in “Tintin and the Wooden Ear.” Herge imagined him as a grizzled old fellow who had given up on society and decided to live out his days in the Amazon simply because he liked it better.

But it seems as though no one has come as close to solving the mystery as Grann.

Through meticulous research, unprecedented access to Fawcett’s journals and papers, face to face interviews with some of his family members -- and even retracing his steps -- he has put together a fascinating map of Fawcett’s life and work. He even unravelled, he believes, the mystery of Fawcett’s true route on his final journey.

I usually get pretty bored with biographies but I couldn’t put it down. There was something about the way Grann brought Fawcett back to life, and the way he seemed to get inside his head to truly understand what it was like to be him, that was fascinating.

It was also sad. He sacrificed so much and left so many people behind in the pursuit of his dream. And I think that’s why he fought so hard in the end, even to the point where it cost his own life and his son’s. The fear of failing, after giving up so much, was worse than the fear of death, for him.

Grann brings all this in a sensitive, compelling manner. Most impressively, he even manages to uncover new, important details about Fawcett’s work, and his Lost City of Z.