The Lost City

Starred review from December 10, 2007
Shukman, a British travel writer and poet, weaves together political intrigue, passionate romance and personal discovery in a visceral and lush debut. Jackson Small is a traumatized 21-year-old discharged from the British army believing himself responsible for the death in Belize of buddy (and occasional bedmate) Connolly, who is mortally injured when the two are ambushed by Guatelmalan rebels while on a training mission in the jungle. Grief-stricken, he embarks on a penitent quest to find La Joya, the lost center of a vanished Peruvian empire that Connolly claimed to have glimpsed in the cloud forest between the Andes highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. As his adventures unfold, Jackson intersects with a remarkable cast: an orphan boy who saves his life; a world-weary British consular official right out of a Graham Greene novel; a former American Peace Corps volunteer living off the grid with two wives; a warmhearted priest trying to bring Catholicism to villagers; a vicious drug lord; and free-spirited Sarah, who calms Jackson’s soul and claims his heart. Shukman’s forbidding landscapes and fearsome jungle labyrinths are as striking as his characters, cranking up the intensity of a cinematic page-turner that echoes Greene and Conrad.

January 1, 2008
After surviving injury and his best friends death under confounding circumstances, a young discharged English soldier decides to take up his friends search for a lost Chachapoyan city deep in the cloud forests of the Peruvian Andes. Heartsick and bumbling, Jackson is not much of an explorer and ends up relying on the unlikeliest of allies (and the most charming of characters), Ignacio, a preternaturally resourceful nine-year-old with an extraordinary cat. Jacksons luck holds when he meets Sarah, an intrepid American. But Chachapoya is the domain of a drug lordunder assault by the U.S. in a covert and dirty war Jackson wants nothing to do with but in which he is inexorably involved. Author of a highly regarded short story collection, Mortimer of the Maghreb (2006), Shukman proves to be a thrilling novelist keenly sensitive to the power of place. Psychological acuity and ravishing descriptions infuse this nearly hallucinogenic and truly affecting tale of the rule of blood, repentance, and love with deep insights into humankinds struggle not only to survive but also to dwell in beauty.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)