The Reverse of the Medal (Aubrey-Maturin Series #11)

by Patrick O'Brian

Overview

"An overwhelming, outstanding novel...!"—Irish Times

Captain Jack Aubrey, R. N., ashore after a successful cruise, is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make certain investments in the City. This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage—the province of his friend Stephen Maturin. Is Aubrey's humiliation and the threatened ruin of his career a deliberate plot? This dark tale is a fitting backdrop to the brilliant characterization and sparkling dialogue which O'Brian's readers have come to expect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393037111
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/1994
Series:	Aubrey-Maturin Series , #11
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.

Date of Birth:

December 12, 1914

Date of Death:

January 2, 2000

Place of Birth:

Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire

Place of Death:

Dublin, Ireland

Education:

Shebbear College, Devon

Website:

http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobhome.htm

What People are Saying About This

Keith Richards

I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me.

A. S. Byatt

Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.

George Will

O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Editorial Reviews

"I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop."

Boston Globe - Edward O. Wilson

"O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century."

George Will

"I devoured Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog."

Slate - Christopher Hitchens

"The best historical novels ever written… On every page Mr. O’Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don’t, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives."

New York Times Book Review - Richard Snow

"There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his."

Chicago Sun-Times - Stephen Becker

"[O’Brian’s] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today’s putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade."

New York Times - David Mamet

"Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit."

A. S. Byatt

"Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars."

New Republic - James Hamilton-Paterson

"It has been something of a shock to find myself—an inveterate reader of girl books—obsessed with Patrick O’Brian’s Napoleonic-era historical novels… What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love."

New York Times - Tamar Lewin

"I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me."

Keith Richards

"[O'Brian's] attention to period speech and detail is uncompromising, and while the cascades of nautical lore can be dizzying, both aficionados and newcomers will be swept up by the richness of Mr. O'Brian's prodigious imagination."

New York Times Book Review - Scott Veale

"The Aubrey-Maturin series… far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart."

Ken Ringle

The high-seas adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship’s surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin, as read by Patrick Tull, have entertained and educated sailors and lubbers alike for 10 previous productions from Recorded Books. Tull’s characterization of these two heroes, his mastery of dialect and his rousing reading of these dramatic sea sagas have become a standard against which all other productions of O’Brian’s work must be measured. This book sees Aubrey being struck from the list of the Royal Navy and beginning a career as a privateer, commanding his beloved ship, SURPRISE. Historical fiction doesn’t get any better, and Tull’s narration is “Prime.” L.R.S. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

JULY 95 - AudioFile