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Patrick O’Brian: A Very Private Life

By (author) Nikolai Tolstoy

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normal price: R 357.95

Price: R 321.95

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An intimate portrait of Patrick Oâ€™Brian, written by his stepson Nikolai Tolstoy. Patrick Oâ€™Brian was one of the greatest British novelists of the twentieth century, securing his place in literary history with the bestselling Aubreyâ€“Maturin series, books that have sold millions of copies worldwide and been hailed as the best historical fiction of all time. An exquisite novelist, translator and biographer, Oâ€™Brian moved in 1949 to Collioure in the south of France, where he led a secluded life with his wife Mary and wrote all his major works. The twenty books that make up the beloved Aubreyâ€“Maturin series earned Oâ€™Brian the epithet â€˜Jane Austen at seaâ€™ for their authentic depiction of Nelsonâ€™s navy, and the relationship between Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and shipâ€™s surgeon Stephen Maturin. Outside his triumphant popularity in fiction, Oâ€™Brian also wrote erudite biographies of both Pablo Picasso and Joseph Banks, as well as publishing translations of Simone de Beauvoir and Henri CharriÃ¨re. In A Very Private Life, Nikolai Tolstoy draws upon his close relationship with his stepfather, as well as his notebooks, letters and photographs, to capture a highly researched but intimate account of those fifty years in Collioure that were the richest of Oâ€™Brianâ€™s writing life. With warm and honest reflection, this biography gives insight into the genius of the little-known man behind the much-loved writing. Tolstoy also tells how, through a sad irony, unjust attacks on Oâ€™Brianâ€™s private life destroyed much of the happiness he had gained from his achievement just as his literary career attained greater acclaim.