Long John Silver

Translated by Tom Geddes A brilliantly evocative successor to Treasure Island.

Long John Silver is living out his twilight years on Madagascar. He has a price on his head, and the Royal Navy is looking to bring him to justice. But what obsesses him most is the fear of posthumous obscurity, and this motivates him to pen his memoirs. Bjrn Larsson's Long John Silver is compelling and attractive, a treacherous and anti-authoritarian figure, driven by pride and a sense of fairness. He tells of his life as a smuggler and of working the Caribbean slave ships; of his years as quartermaster to the rum-soaked brute Captain Flint; and, finally, of his meeting with Daniel Defoe, with whom he watches the hanging of pirates at London's Execution Dock. But this is no mere sequel to Treasure Island. Larsson takes Robert Louis Stevenson's story as his basis and reinvents it, bringing the most complex and powerful character to the fore. Long John Silver is not only a beautifully textured evocation of eighteenth-century seafaring life but also a witty, absorbing, and allusive comment on the making of a myth.