The Wreck of the Medusa
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A "thrilling . . . captivating" account of the most famous shipwreck before the Titanic—a tragedy that inspired an unforgettable masterpiece of Western art (The Boston Globe).
In June 1816, the Medusa set sail. Commanded by an incompetent captain, the frigate ran aground off the desolate West African coast. During the chaotic evacuation a privileged few claimed the lifeboats, while 147 men and one woman were herded aboard a makeshift raft that was soon cut loose by the boats that had pledged to tow it to safety.
Those on the boats made it ashore and undertook a two-hundred-mile trek through the sweltering Sahara, but conditions were far worse on the drifting raft. Crazed, parched, and starving, the diminishing band fell into mayhem. When rescue arrived thirteen days later, only fifteen were alive.
Among the handful of survivors were two men whose bestselling account of the maritime disaster scandalized Europe and inspired promising artist Théodore Géricault, who threw himself into a study of the Medusa tragedy, turning it into a vast canvas in his painting, The Raft of the Medusa.
Drawing on contemporaneously published accounts and journals of survivors, The Wreck of the Medusa is "a captivating gem about art's relation to history" (Booklist) and ultimately "a thrilling read" (The Guardian).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In June 1816 French frigate Medusa ran aground on a sandbar off the African coast. What followed gross incompetence, murder and cannibalism shocked European society and pushed the fragile, recently restored French monarchy to the brink. From the swirl of characters boiling around the story admirals, ministers and kings Miles (David Jones: The Maker Unmade) anchors his tale on Medusa survivor Alexandre Correard and painter Th odore G ricault. After surviving the wreck and subsequently drifting on a raft on which 133 of 147 died, Correard, an engineer fleeing the growing chaos in post-Napoleonic France, wrote a bestselling account of the tragedy and agitated for the monarchy's end. Revealed in the ensuing controversy was France's ongoing participation in the illegal trade of African slaves. With such great elements in place (flesh eating, palace intrigue and illicit love) this yarn has much promise. Unfortunately, while the story roars along with its own inherent momentum, Miles's prose is sometimes awkward ("Their union was obviously intense and, as with all true love, supremely precious. Catastrophically, it was to prove short-lived"). Nevertheless, the story of the wreck of the Medusa and the churning cultural machinations around it does make for a compelling read.
