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Product Description
"This brilliantly written reconstruction of Sir Walter Raleigh's 1595 South American journey combines painstaking scholarship, vivid travelogue, and an intuitive sensitivity for the many meanings of the El Dorado myth. . . . Nicholl brings this six-week expedition to life. . . . A rare treat for both intellect and imagination."—Kirkus Reviews
"Walter Raleigh . . . was one of those Elizabethan all-rounders who still seem staggeringly larger than life. . . . Mr. Nicholl's cogent reconstruction of the journey uses Raleigh's own account, 'The Discoverie of Guiana'—part truth, part advertising, part rhapsody—and much well-found ancillary material."—Anthony Bailey, New York Times
"Like The Reckoning, his brilliant account of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, Nicholl's new book might be called an exercise in historical conjuring. The Creature in the Map is an effort not only to analyse but also to call into presence the lived experience of the voyage Raleigh undertook in 1595 to the Orinoco Delta in what is now Venezuela."—Stephen Greenblatt, Times Literary Supplement
"Charles Nicholl belongs to an elite company, that of historians who know how to make research into arcane matters and distant times as engrossing as In Cold Blood or All the President's Men."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
Amazon.com Review
In May 1595, a hundred Englishmen - "gentlemen, soldiers, rowers, boat-keepers, boys, and of all sorts" - rowed up a river in South America in search of the lost golden city of El Dorado. They were led by Sir Walter Ralegh, forty years old, ready to hazard his fading reputation on this doomed gamble.
Four hundred years later Charles Nicholl follows their trail into the strange terrain of this enduring international obsession. The journey begins with Ralegh's curious "charte" in the British Museum and leads through the labrynthine delta of the Orinoco River and up to the rugged highlands of southern Venezuela. In this vivid reconstruction, Charles Nicholl blends solid historical scholarship with idiosyncratic modern reportage in a unique and entertaining mix
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