Author(s): Matthew Pearl

Fiction

On the island of Samoa, in a house perched on a cliff beneath a smouldering volcano, 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 to smuggle them to a hungry public. But a changing world means the bookaneers will soon become extinct. 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 this 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.