New Literature: The Lost City

Invalided out of the army at barely twenty, Jackson Small returns to England traumatised by the violent death of his fellow soldier and close friend Connolly.

Overcome by grief, Jackson sets out on a quest back to the Peruvian jungle in search of something he cannot even be sure is real: the lost city of La Joya, the ancient capital of a vanished empire – a place of rare wonder once glimpsed by Connolly and never forgotten. The pilgrimage Jackson has to make to reach it brings him into contact with worlds he could never imagine. The lethal depths of the forest that hide La Joya turn out to conceal dangerous entanglements and other seekers, with far more sinister motives and dark secrets.

Jackson’s journey from a damaged soldier seeking meaning in rooting out a lost empire from the jungle, to a man able to participate and delight in the simple joys of life and love is breathtaking and beautiful. A character locked in the present, unable to face the past or imagine a future, Jackson allows himself to know only as much as he needs to, to survive.

THE LOST CITY is ambitious and gripping, Shukman has created an intensely moving story, wrapped around intense political intrigue.

Henry Shukman wrote Sons of the Moon, at the age of nineteen, followed by Travels with my Trombone, based on a year working as a musician in the Caribbean, and Savage Pilgrims, a memoir about New Mexico, where he lived and taught for several years.

He reviews for the New York Times Book Review and is a contributing editor of Conde Nast Traveller. He has won several poetry awards - the Daily Telegraph Arvon Prize, a Times Literary Supplement Prize, the Tabla and Peterloo Prizes - in addition to an Arts Council Writer's Award. His short stories have appeared in O Henry Prize Stories, and his poetry in The Times Literary Supplement and The Daily Telegraph. His first poetry collection, In Dr. No’s Garden, won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was a Book of the Year in The Times (London) and The Guardian. Sandstorm won the 2006 Author’s Club Best First Novel Award. He lives in New Mexico.

To be published by Little, Brown 15th February 2007, price £10.99