The Marvellous (But Authentic) Adventures of Captain Corcoran

Description

Introducing the marvellous Captain Corcoran - he is charming to ladies, courteous to true gentlemen, death to pirates and merciless to the English. He speaks several languages, can bend an iron bar with his bare hands, and has adventured his way across the Seven Seas with his faithful friend Louison by his side. Loyal only to her master, Louison can be a little boisterous, and there's devil to pay when she misses a meal (she is a tiger, after all). Corcoran is on the hunt for a lost sacred Hindu text. Once in India, he is soon distracted from his quest by the claims of Prince Holkar, his lotus-eyed daughter, and their daring stand against the English occupying forces. Beloved by many French schoolchildren (including the young Jean-Paul Sartre) at the turn of the century, the marvellous Corcoran has been too long forgotten. Sam Miller (author of Strange Kind of Paradise- India through Foreign Eyes) has loving translated these wild, funny, unabashedly romantic adventures from the French for the first time so that the Captain and his charming Louison can be embraced by a new generation of readers, young and old.

Alfred Assollant was born in 1827. He was a teacher, journalist, writer and outspoken opponent of Napoleon III. He wrote more than thirty books over thirty years, including historical fiction, collected essays and a treatise on the rights of women, but only The Marvellous (But Authentic) Adventures of Captain Corcoran, published in 1867, was a success. In the 1870s, his wife, son and daughter died in quick succession and Assollant found himself poverty-stricken. In 1886 he also died, all but forgotten despite the continuing success of Corcoran, in a paupers' hospital in Paris. Sam Miller was born and brought up in London. He studied History at the university of Cambridge and Politics at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, before joining the BBC in 1986, for which he has worked, on and off, ever since. In the early 1990s he was the BBC World Service TV and radio correspondent in Delhi, and on his return to the UK in 1993 was the presenter of the BBC's current affairs programme, South Asia Report. Later he became the head of the Urdu service and subsequently Managing Editor, South Asia. He was posted back to Delhi in 2002 and has remained there ever since. He is the author of Delhi- Adventures in a Megacity (2009), Blue Guide- India (2012) A Strange Kind of Paradise- India Through Foreign Eyes (2014), and most recently Fathers, which was published by Jonathan Cape in 2017.

"The only thing left for me to do is to pick up The Adventures of Captain Corcoran which is lying on the table...open at random a book I've read dozens of times...I forget about myself as soon as I start reading" -- Jean-Paul Sartre