Book description
1677, on a late summer’s evening two ships lurk off the coast of
southwest Ireland. They are Barbary corsairs from North Africa, slave
catchers. As soon as it is dark, their landing parties row ashore to
raid a small fishing village - on the hunt for fresh prey . . .
In the village, seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch wakes to the sound of a
pistol shot. Moments later he and his sister Elizabeth are taken
prisoner. From then on Hector’s life plunges into a turbulent and
lawless world that is full of surprises. Separated from Elizabeth, he is
sold to the slave market of Algiers, where he survives with the help of
his newfound friend Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean.
The two men convert to Islam to escape the horrors of the slave pens,
only to become victims of the deadly warfare of the Mediterranean.
Serving aboard a Turkish corsair ship, their vessel is sunk at sea and
they find themselves condemned to the oar as galley slaves for France.
Driven by his quest to find his sister, Hector finally stumbles on the
chilling truth of her fate when he and Dan are shipwrecked on the coast
of Morocco . . . Tim Severin, explorer, traveller, author, film-maker
and lecturer has made many expeditions, most recently in search of Moby
Dick and Robinson Crusoe, and has written books about all of them. He
made his historical fiction debut with the hugely successful VIKING
series. CORSAIR is his first Hector Lynch novel.
