Clarissa Oakes - Tapa dura

‘...full of the energy that comes from a writer having struck a vein... Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.’
James Hamilton- Paterson

‘You are in for the treat of your lives. Thank God for Patrick O’Brian: his genius illuminates the literature of the English language, and lightens the lives of those who read him.’
Kevin Myers, Irish Times

‘The best of twentieth-century historical novels’
T.J. Binyon

‘What is so gripping about O’Brian’s novels is the completeness with which he invents a world which is our own and not our own... O’Brian is a brilliant observer.’
A.S. Byatt, Evening Standard

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are to be re-issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets.

Patrick O’Brian is now recognised as the greatest historical novelist writing in English. He has been described variously as “Jane Austen – sur mer” and “the greatest novelist you’ve never read”. But at last he is enjoying the recognition he deserves with huge media interest in both him and his books.

All the elements that have made Patrick O’Brian’s astonishing series one of the most highly praised works in contemporary fiction are here in Clarissa Oakes – the narrative grip, the impeccable ear for dialogue, the humour and the unsurpassed capacity to create and recreate a rich and true friendship between two men in the late eighteenth-century.