Long John Silver

Whatever happened to Long John Silver, the enigmatic, treacherous and strangely likeable pirate whose exploits made him the anti-hero of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island? The answer lies in the pages of Bj rn Larsson’s superbly inventive picaresque fiction. After his seafaring life, Silver retires to a fortified cliff in Madagascar, a rich man attended by a handful of followers and servants. He has a price on his head and the Royal Navy is looking to bring him to justice. However, what obsesses him is the fear of posthumous obscurity, of being written out of history. So he sits down and writes his memoirs, ‘The true and eventful History of my Life of Liberty and Adventure as a Gentleman of Fortune and Enemy to Mankind.’ Much more than just pastiche, Larsson’s book takes Stevenson’s story as a basis and re-invents it, bringing its most powerful and complex character to the fore.