Grann, David The Wager

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire. A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, TIME, Smithsonian, NPR, Vulture, Kirkus Reviews Riveting...Reads like a thriller, tackling a multilayered historyand imperialismwith gusto. Time "A tour de force of narrative nonfiction. The Wall Street Journal On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majestys Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as the prize of all the oceans, it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. But then ... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-deathfor whomever the court found guilty could hang. The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Granns recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick OBrian, his portrayal of the castaways desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Granns work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.

#1 on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks
*One of Barack Obama's "Favourite Books of 2023"
*On the longlist for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023
*Multiple Book of the Year
*Translated into 25 languages

"The greatest sea story ever told." The Spectator

"A gripping account ... dramatic and gripping." The Economist

"Reads like a thriller." Time Magazine

DAVID GRANN, born in 1967, is an award-winning journalist and non-fiction author. He works as an editor at The New Yorker and has published articles in The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. His book Killers of the Flower Moon was published in German by btb and was made into a film by and with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, who also secured the rights to his latest bestseller The Wager. The Wager was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks and made it onto Barack Obama's Summer Reading List.