I’ve been on a nonfiction kick lately thanks to David Grann’s earlier work, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (highly recommended), which put me in the mood for historical true crime and, let’s face it, serial killers. So I was happy to find his second book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. While not about serial killers, it’s a work on a historical mystery: the disappearance of Lt Col Percy Fawcett and the supposed missing civilisation of El Dorado (or whatever you choose to call it; Grann calls it Z).

Things I learned from this book: The Amazon is fucking terrifying. The ways nearly everyone in this narrative died is horrific, and some of the descriptions made me want to cry and/or drown myself in the bath.

It’s interesting how the myth of Z came about, but what really interests me is the lost city Grann points to in the end which he suggests may be the reason the myth was perpetuated: Kuhikugu. Continue reading →