The Lost City of Z

British surveyor and explorer Percy Fawcett spent years mapping disputed frontiers in South America and became convinced that the Amazon had once supported a substantial civilisation he called “Z”. In 1925 he entered Brazil’s Mato Grosso with his son Jack Fawcett and Jack’s friend Raleigh Rimell, intending to travel lightly and avoid the large expeditions that had previously damaged relations with Indigenous communities. The party sent back its final dispatch and then disappeared, creating one of the twentieth century’s most persistent exploration mysteries.

Grann reconstructs Fawcett’s career from letters, diaries and archival records while following the rival theories, rescue attempts and deaths generated by the search for him. He also recounts his own journey into the region and examines archaeological evidence that challenges the old European assumption that complex, settled societies could not have developed in the Amazon. The result combines biography, expedition history and an inquiry into obsession, colonial attitudes and the limits of the surviving evidence.