Description

A cult masterpiece and a darkly comic tale of survival on the high seas, inspired by the mysterious author B. Traven’s own life

‘Whoever survived the Yorikke could never be frightened any more during his lifetime by anything’

Stateless and stranded after he loses his passport, sailor Gerald Gales flees arrest and persecution across Europe, until he finally finds work on the Yorikke, a decrepit ‘death ship’ bound for destruction. Condemned to stoke the furnaces, Gales must navigate a labyrinth of surreal rules and the brutal realities of life at sea if he is to make it out alive. First published in 1926 and thought to bear the traces of the mysterious author B. Traven’s own experience of migrating to Mexico, The Death Ship is a darkly absurd, raging tale about what it takes to survive when life is cheap.

Publisher Review

The greatest of Traven’s works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state * Los Angeles Times * B. Traven is coming to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the twentieth century * New York Times Book Review * Traven’s philosophical anarchism, his disengagement, his scorn for regimentation and material goods and his love of individual liberty and the primitive past could, conceivably, command as much reverence form the new generation as does Henry David Thoreau * Los Angeles Times * He tells his story better than the best storytellers; delves deeper into characters than most so-called psychological writers. All the virility, terseness and tension that Hemingway worked so hard for…seem to be Traven’s by birthright * Books and Bookmen * Traven was above all a passionate defender of the victims of society, a man who hated injustice… His books were marvellous affirmations of his faith in the beaten man and his stories were permeated with a great and single-minded vision — John Huston