The Reverse of the Medal

by Patrick O'Brian

Overview

"An overwhelming, outstanding novel...!"—Irish Times

Captain Jack Aubrey, accomplished at sea but dreadfully vulnerable on land, finds himself ashore after a successful cruise. With his prize money burning a hole in his pocket, he is persuaded by a kind stranger he meets at a tavern to make certain investments. This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage the province of his friend Stephen Maturin, now tasked with rescuing his imperiled friend as he also attempts to locate his wayward wife, Diana Villiers. Is Aubrey’s humiliation and the threatened ruin of his career a deliberate plot? This dark tale is a fitting backdrop to the brilliant characterization and sparkling dialogue which Patrick O’Brian’s readers have come to expect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324020516
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/29/2022
Series:	Aubrey-Maturin Series , #11
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	159,836
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.

Date of Birth:

December 12, 1914

Date of Death:

January 2, 2000

Place of Birth:

Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire

Place of Death:

Dublin, Ireland

Education:

Shebbear College, Devon

Website:

http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobhome.htm

What People are Saying About This

Keith Richards

I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me.

A. S. Byatt

Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.

George Will

O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Editorial Reviews

"The Aubrey-Maturin series is a great novel. In relentlessly beautiful prose it creates, or re-creates, a world of people about whom we care intensely, and who come alive all over the globe…You will meet nothing like O’Brian in all literature."

Chicago Sun-Times - Stephen Becker

"Bubbles at the brim, stimulating, tender, thought-provoking."

London Review of Books - John Bayley