Status
Collection
Publication
Description
Un marino sin barco, desterrado del mar, conoce a una extraña mujer que posee, tal vez sin saberlo, respuestas a preguntas que ciertos hombres se hacen desde siglos. Cazadores de naufragios en busca del fantasma de un barco perdido en el Mediterráneo, problemas de latitud y longitud cuyo secreto yace oculto en antiguos derroteros y cartas náuticas, museos navales, bibliotecas... Nunca el mar y la Historia, la ciencia de la navegación, la aventura y el misterio se habían combinado de un modo tan extraordinario en una novela, como en La carta esférica. De Melville a Stevenson y Conrad, de Homero a Patrick O'Brian, toda la gran literatura escrita sobre el mar late en las páginas de esta historia fascinante e inolvidable. La novela fue llevada al cine por Imanol Uribe y protagonizada por Carmelo Gómez y Aitana Sánchez Gijón. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A fearless Spanish crew embarks on a search for a lost ship, swallowed by the Indian Ocean centuries ago, in a novel by "a master of the literary thriller" (Booklist, starred review). Manuel Coy is a suspended sailor with time on his hands, a mariner without a ship. While attending a maritime auction in Barcelona, he meets Tánger Soto, a captivating beauty who works for the Naval Museum in Madrid. A woman obsessed with the Dei Gloria, a famed Jesuit ship sunk by pirates in the seventeenth century, she now hopes to find it and unearth its mysteries, rumored to be buried the bottom of the sea off the southern coast of Spain. Quickly drawn into the search, Coy accompanies Tánger Soto, and a wise old man of the sea whose sailboat will carry the crew into the middle of nowhere in search of a fortune. But more than treasure is rising to the surface--secrets are, too. And from these depths will also come danger, and an adventure no one is prepared for. From the acclaimed author of The Queen of the South, The Nautical Chart is "a swashbuckling tale of mystery" (The Washington Post Book World).… (more)
User reviews
(Dec/01)
The story revolves around a sailor who has been barred from his
As always, Perez-Reverte manages to weave considerable research into the story quite effortlessly. He just threads it into the action so you hardly notice how much you’re learning. Here we learn much of the nuances of a sailor’s life as well as a subtle history of mapmaking. So this is a good page-turner that will teach you a few things. But if you’re unconvinced, start with his other two books that I mentioned.
Coy is a sailor confined to land for a couple of years because he accidentally ran a ship aground. He's lured by lovely museum curator Tanger into the search for a Jesuit ship that sank/was sunk in the late 18th century, and for its cargo of precious
This longish text demands that you immerse yourself in it, that you invest in time in it; it's not really amenable to being read in ten-minute chunks grabbed here and there as other activities permit. If you're looking for rip-roaring, pulse-pounding action, this isn't for you (although there's some of that in it), but I found it entirely engrossing nonetheless -- it was a wrench to put it down each time I had to.
Margaret Sayers Peden's respectful translation serves the book well. Every now and then I was reminded, by an odd turn of phrase or some infelicuty, that this was a translation, but that occurred no more than a handful of times during the book; otherwise, the narrative read with great style.
it feels like when you go to an elaborate dinner served by a drunk foodie couple whose overambitious menu features dishes with expensive and exotic ingredients that they just can't quite pull
if you put a post-it over the author's name you might think Dan Brown and Clive Cussler's manuscripts got misfed in adjacent Xerox machines that spat out the pages and the people who came upon the papers scattered about published the stuff they picked up off the floor and shuffled back together.