Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed
A biography of the enigmatic author of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, who changed his name in 1945 after serving in British intelligence during WWII, thus burying a failed marriage and a precocious writing career as a novelist. O’Brian went on to write arguably the most profound fiction about male friendship in the English language. He was a biographer of Picasso and a translator of Simone de Beauvoir. Dean’s groundbreaking unauthorized biography Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed was called “a model of how these things should be: skeptical, generous and almost as well informed as the master himself” by the Daily Telegraph, which named it a book of the year and serialized it in four full pages.
Critical Acclaim
“King casts a sober eye but not a cold heart on this secretive writer whose devotees should rejoice at this account of his life, written with appreciative balance, rich with literary insight. . . .”
–L.A. Times
“A worthy . . . generous portrait.”
–New York Times Book Review
“The full story . . . brought out with finesse.”
–Smithsonian
“It is a tribute to King's pertinacity and the admirable fairness of his approach that he has succeeded in producing a fascinating and rewarding study of a uniquely complex man.”
—Nikolai Tolstoy, Literary Review
“As full an account of O’Brian’s troubled life as we are likely to get . . . thorough, perceptive.”
—Max Hastings, Evening Standard
“[O’Brian] was complex, flawed and fascinating, which makes for exceptional biography fodder. Dean King has given us a book to match the man. Grade: (A)”
—Brothersjudd.com
“[O’Brian’s] strange, icy, complicated nature was beset with paradox, and his biographer teases them out well. The book is full of interest, and King picks a judicious path through the disinformation about his subject.”
–Financial Times