- Patrick O’Brian

Aubrey-Maturin - The Fortune of War (Aubrey-Maturin, Book 6)

By Patrick O’Brian
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Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are to be re-issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets.

Captain Jack Aubrey, RN, arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a despatch vessel. But the war of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen’s past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance.

Author: Patrick O’Brian
Format: Hardback
Release Date: 05 May 1998
Pages: 384
ISBN: 978-0-00-222498-7
Price: £16.99 (Export Price) , £16.99, €26.80
Patrick O’Brian, until his death in 2000, was one of our greatest contemporary novelists. He is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey–Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He is the author of many other books including Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He lived for many years in South West France and he died in Dublin in January 2000.

‘…full of the energy that comes from a writer having struck a vein… Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.’James Hamilton-Paterson -

‘You are in for the treat of your lives. Thank God for Patrick O’Brian: his genius illuminates the literature of the English language, and lightens the lives of those who read him.’Kevin Myers, Irish Times -

‘Patrick O’Brian writes as brilliantly as ever. The Fortune of War is a marvellously full-flavoured, engrossing book, which towers over its current rivals in the genre like a three-decker over a ship’s longboat.’T.J. Binyon, Times Literary Supplement -

‘No one else writing in the genre today can match his erudition, humour, inventiveness and flair. With his marvellous grasp of contemporary idiom and of the feeling of the period, he brings to the stories a power and authenticity that can never fail to captivate.’Kevin Myers, Irish Sunday Independent -

‘Beautifully written, this is a book to read again and again, as so many of its predecessors have been.’Yorkshire Post -

‘Captain Aubrey and his surgeon, Stephen Maturin, compose one of those complex and fascinating pairs of characters which have inspired thrilling stories of all kinds since the Iliad.’Iris Murdoch -