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Shanghaied in San Francisco in 1868, a teenage Scots sailor embarked upon a voyage into the heart of darkness. Jack Renton's remains the only authenticated account of a mental land physical ordeal that has haunted the Western imagination for centuries.
Escaping from his floating prison in a open whaleboat, he drifted 2000 miles across the Pacific, only to be washed up on the shores of an island shunned by all 19th century mariners, Malaita in the Solomon Islands. There he was stripped of his clothes and possessions by a tribe of headhunters and forced to 'go native' to survive. Initially a slave to their chief Kabou, he eventually became that man's most trusted warrior and advisor.
Renton's own account of his eight-year exile, published after he was rescued, caused a sensation, though as the book makes clear, he airbrushed out most of the key events that brought about his transformation.
Researching the Renton legend, Nigel Randell spent years talking to the Malaitans and piecing together a very different account from Renton's sanitised version.
book reviews
- The Sunday Times
'His telling of Renton's story is brilliantly done... original and gripping'. - Scotland on Sunday
'Compelling and fascinating, this rich reconstruction is history you could not make up'. - Simon Winchester. The Daily Mail
'Nigel Randell's extraordinary first book reminds us brilliantly of the deeply British secret - that we are not exactly as we seem....it is an utterly compelling story.' - The Good Book Guide
'A grisly, fascinating and meticulously spun yarn.' - Publisher's Weekly
'First time author Randell demonstrates his skilled storytelling - fascinating and horrendous.'
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