Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263038 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 389 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Rich, old and almost alone, Long John Silver sits in Madagascan exile and broods on the past; both Jim Hawkins and Daniel Defoe tricked and libelled him and for once he is going to put the record straight while there is time. There is a price on his head and soon they will come to collect ... Larsson intelligently uses one of the most famous of fictional pirates as his mouthpiece in a book which tries to reconstruct the classic pirates of the Caribbean; mutiny followed by piracy was for many of them the only possible way out from the intolerable abuse of life on British ships. Silver has been an honest man and ended up shanghaied, and falsely accused of mutiny--if he becomes a monster and the account of what he does to the man who costs him his leg is pretty much emetic, how can his crimes weigh against the slavery and brutality from which supposedly good men profit? Larsson knows both the fictional and documentary record of the pirates of the Spanish Main; he makes particularly intelligent use of the biography of Captain England. He knows his stuff and, more importantly, he knows why he cares about it. --Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
A novel on the life of the 18th-century pirate, Long John Silver. After retiring to a fortified cliff in Madagascar to write his memoirs, Long John is interrupted by the British Navy who wish to take him back to England for trial. They return to English shores with only the memoirs on board.

From the Author
A short biobibliography and some press
Dear (potential) Reader!

I just thought I would put down a short biobibliography which might be of interest and also take the liberty to point out that my second novel, The Celtic Ring, has also been published in English by Seafarer Books. For those of you who might have liked Long John, this could be an option. Amazon has the information. But here comes the bio:

Short biography, selected interviews and reviews

I was born in Jönköping, Sweden, the 28th of december 1953. Since then I have moved around, not only as an adult, but partly also as a child because of the death of my father who drowned in an accident when I was seven. At the age of 15, I spent a year in the USA on a scholarship. I was almost about to stay, having received a scholarship to go to Dartmouth College and study oceanography, but came to my senses in time and went back to Sweden, although reluctantly.

At the age of 19, I refused absolutely to do my military service which rendered me three prison sentences of six months total, a rewarding and important experience in my life. I am not a radical pacifist, but I do mean that the first and foremost human right ought to be be the right for every individual to decide when and for what he would be prepared to risk and possibly sacrifice his (only) life. Instead of marching in the ranks and obeying orders, I left for France, romantically inspired by Hemingway and others, in order to live like an author. I wrote, too, but nothing much of value. I came to understand however that writing books has much more to do with hard work than inspiration and bohemic life. To be on the safe side, however, I also at the same time studied French by way of correspondance at the University of Lund.

For a period of seven years I spent most of my time in Paris and Brittany, still trying to write literature while studying French "for a living". One day I had finished a collection of short stories, Splitter, which to my surprise was published at my first attempt.

I moved back to Sweden, but had problems fitting in with the campus life in Lund after my free life in Paris. So I moved to Copenhagen, where I met Helle, a biologist working extra in one of the nicest pubs in Copenhagen. Fifteen years of companionship later, Helle became the mother of my daughter, Kathrine, soon (too soon) four years old. Gradually I became a more serious student at the University, so serious that I could live for a couple of years on doctorate grants. About ten years ago, Helle and I bought a 31 ft sailing-boat, the Rustica, which we transformed into our permanent home, winter and summer, for six years. We loved to be live-aboards and would do it again.

While living on board, I wrote my second novel, inspired by my cruises to Scotland and Brittany, two countries on the so called Celtic Fringe. The novel was called The Celtic Ring, and is a novel of several genres: adventure story, sailing story, spy novel, political novel. It has sold two editions in Sweden, has been published in France, Denmark, Germany, England and the US, with pocket editions in France, Denmark and Germany, and it will be published in Italy and in Greece.

Somewhere along the line, I finished my doctorate theses on the critical reception of Simone de Beauvoir and found myself Doctor of Philosophy in French literature and a kind of specialist in literary criticism, not a bad thing when you read the reviews of your own books. For a couple of years I worked in a vocational school, teaching French to future professionals in tourism. Later I got an appointment at the University for doing research. Luckily, this appointment was interrupted after two years because of lack of funds. This suited me and Helle fine, because at that time we were ready to go long-distance cruising. For two years, we sailed Scotland, Ireland (where we spent the winter), Brittany, and Galicia in Spain.

During that time I wrote the novel Long John Silver, a long nourished project which I had just as long postponed, since I did not believe that I had the capacity to take on a classic like Treasure Island. I finally did, and it seems I pulled it off reasonably well enough, at least well enough for the rights to be sold to eleven countries.

Waiting for the publication of my one-legged pirate, I wrote another piece of science, a long text on the place and meaning of the French adjective which I have sent to my French friends to read in the evenings to their children to make them sleep (both adults and children). This book made me "Docent", which is the last step before eventually becoming Professor. After that I wrote another book where I pretend to explain what "meaning" is — quite a task, and philosophical too. I also had the misfortune of being elected Head of the Department of Romance Studies at the University of Lund. Unless I watch out, I will end up as an academic.

However, I have published a fourth novel in Sweden, Drömmar vid Havet, which has been sold to Norway, France, Greece, Italy and Germany. And I have just left Norstedts with the manuscript to my fifth, Det onda ögat [The Evil Eye].

What is quite certain by now is that "producing" literature means much more to me than studying and teaching it.

And here is what some of the British critics has said about Long John:

This is literary pastiche of the highest order: a work of such exuberant invention, yet so faithful to the spirit of the original, that it is almost as if Robert Louis Stevenson has come back to life. (Julia Flynn, The Sunday Telegraph)

It is so crammed with action that one reads if at full throttle. Here every page has something to tingle spines, churn stomachs or curdle blood. […] Björn Larsson brilliantly conjures the wit and verve of swash-buckling classics. (Miranda France, The Daily Telegraph)

In short, it’s a bold act of imaginative piracy, a celebration of story-telling as an expression of the indomitability of the human spirit, a cunning pastiche of just about everything ever written concerning low life on the high seas. (Robert Nye, The Times)

Larsson pitches Silver into his period with impressive swagger. […] Though steeped in drama, this is a thoughtful, evocative story which deserves to be judged by its own merits. (Rosemary Goring, Scotland on Sunday)

Spiced with wit and wry observation, Larsson has created a vast, engrossing and compelling tale of one of literature’s most intriguing anti-heroes. (Simon Fairfax, The Express)

He has made a more than honourable fist of the venture. (Jonathan Bouquet, The Observer)

A superbly evoked account of the hardship and injustice of 18th-century life […] Larsson has achieved an outstanding evocation and expansion of Stevenson’s original creation, both fictionaly and historically — and, one might add, morally. (Tom Geddes, Swedish Book Review)

This life of Silver is salty, and scuds along like a clipper in full sail. Breathtaking. (The Yorkshire Post)

Customer Reviews

Great Fun!
One of the most recognizable characters in English literature gets his own fictional autobiography in this sweeping historical tour-de-force by a Swedish sailor, of all people. For many, LJS is the most memorable and deep character in the classic adventure tale Treasure Island. In this book he recounts his life both before and after the events in Stevenson's tale. His first-person story unfolds in chronological chapters which alternate with chapters in which he tells of his dealings with that chronicler of pirates, Daniel Defoe, and later, Jim Hawkins. Many of these chapters are written directly to the two libelers, and include rambling meditations on the nature of freedom and meaning of life.

The accounts of his life adventures are rich in language and detail. It's a stunning achievement by translator Geddes, given all the nautical and period slang, and one would never know the book wasn't written in English. Readers who know nothing about boats and seamanship (like myself) will have no problems following the action and appreciating the details. Larsson has apparently researched the social history of pirates and seafaring in great detail, as the book delivers a detailed and spirited defense of those who went to sea under the black flag. Great attention is given to the awful conditions of the average sailor on a merchantman, and the evils of slave ships are examined at length and in graphic detail. Through Silver, Larsson portrays the buccaneers of the era as freedom-seekers and hedonists, living for the moment. Their crimes are shown as no greater than that of the merchants who plunder distant lands and enslave people.

This unvarnished "truth" is brought out in vivid storytelling as the old pirate, now living in Madagascar, puts pen to paper. It has to be said that while the chapters describing Silver's life and (mis)adventures are wonderful, the shorter chapters where he rambles on about good/evil, etc. can get repetitive and tiresome. Still, the book is great fun and well worth reading for its take on pirate life. Fans of the original Treasure Island may also be interested in Justin Scott's fun 1994 version, which transplants the action to 1950s Long Island.

Get that buckle out and get it swashed!
This was a real corker. I like my heroes malevolent, self interested, ruthless and, when possible, murderous. Long John Silver is absolutely spot on on all those counts. You can read about the story anywhere, so I won't go into details, but the way its told is exceptional. Full praise to the translator too - its impossible to tell that this is a work in translation. Given the ample usage of 18th Century seafairing slang its actually hard to know how this might of worked in Swedish.

The story is told with gory detail, pace, strong characterisation and fantastic narrative. Make no mistake though, this is not just a gory boy's own pirate story. I think it would stand up to scrutiny from an historical document perspective too.

If you liked this book you would like the Requiem Shark too.

Historical Fiction at its best
This is a wonderful retelling of the imagined life of Long John Silver. I've always loved the stories of Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott, and the only two authors who've dealt as successfully reinventing the pirate genre are Bjorn Larsson in Long John Silver and Nicholas Griffin in the Requiem Shark, two of the best books of the year.