The Far Side of the World (Aubrey-Maturin Series #10)

by Patrick O'Brian, Simon Vance (Narrated by)

Overview

The War of 1812 continues, and Jack Aubrey sets course for Cape Horn on a mission after his own heart: intercepting a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. Stephen Maturin has orders of his own in the world of secret intelligence. Disaster in various guises awaits them in the Great South Sea and in the far reaches of the Pacific: typhoons, castaways, shipwrecks, murder, and criminal insanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786152674
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	12/23/2005
Series:	Aubrey-Maturin Series , #10
Edition description:	Unabridged

About the Author

Patrick O'Brian (1914–2000) was born Richard Patrick Russ in England. During the Second World War, he and his wife were involved in British secret-service activities. After the war, he changed his name to Patrick O'Brian and began his career as a novelist, biographer, and translator. In the 1990s, Mr. O'Brian, then in his seventies, achieved the critical and popular recognition that was his due.

Simon Vance is the winner of numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie® Award in 2006. Born in England, he worked for ten years as a radio news announcer for the BBC and as a narrator for the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Besides narrating, he is involved in numerous stage-acting projects in the United States and Europe.

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

Editorial Reviews

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

A. S. Byatt

I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop.— E. O. Wilson

Boston Globe

These eccentric, improbably novels seem to have been written by Patrick O'Brian to please himself in the first instance, and thereafter to please those readers who may share his delight in precision of language, odd lands and colors, a humane respect for such old-fashioned sentiments as friendship and honor. Like Aubrey and Maturin playing Mozart duets beneath a Pacific moon, he works elegant variations on the tradition of the seafaring adventure story.— Thomas Flanagan

New York Times Book Review

A world of enchanting fictional surfaces.— John Bayley

New York Review of Books

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.

George Will

The best historical novels ever written… On every page Mr. O’Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don’t, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives.

Richard Snow - New York Times Book Review

A world of enchanting fictional surfaces.

John Bayley - New York Review of Books

These eccentric, improbably novels seem to have been written by Patrick O'Brian to please himself in the first instance, and thereafter to please those readers who may share his delight in precision of language, odd lands and colors, a humane respect for such old-fashioned sentiments as friendship and honor. Like Aubrey and Maturin playing Mozart duets beneath a Pacific moon, he works elegant variations on the tradition of the seafaring adventure story.

Thomas Flanagan - New York Times Book Review

I devoured Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog.

Christopher Hitchens - Slate

Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.

James Hamilton-Paterson - New Republic

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.”

Keith Richards

It has been something of a shock to find myself—an inveterate reader of girl books—obsessed with Patrick O’Brian’s Napoleonic-era historical novels… What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love.

Tamar Lewin - New York Times

[O’Brian’s] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today’s putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade.

David Mamet - New York Times

The Aubrey-Maturin series… far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.

Ken Ringle - Washington Post

There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his.

Stephen Becker - Chicago Sun-Times

I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop.

E. O. Wilson - Boston Globe