Captain Blood

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CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Jan 25, 2010 - Fiction - 252 pages
"Captain Blood," by Rafael Sabatini, is filled with swashbuckling and a salty dose of high seas adventure. "Captain Blood" was a smash hit when first published in 1922, and also the basis for Michael Curtiz's 1935 film starring Errol Flynn. Rafael Sabatini struggled for years as a writer before striking it big with his fabulous historical fiction stories. His breakthrough came with "Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution" in 1921. Immediately following this novel was "Captain Blood: An Odyssey." These two books alone sealed Sabatini's success with an audience hungry for adventure tales. The book's hero, Peter Blood, starts out as a physician who spends his days healing the sick, smoking his pipe, and reminiscing about his ten-year stint as an adventurer throughout Europe. Blood refuses to get involved in a rebellion against the tyranny of the English king, James Stuart. Blood is charged as a traitor, however, for treating an injured rebel. Blood is sentenced to death by hanging, which is then commuted to ten years of slavery on the island of Barbados. The story rapidly takes off as Blood escapes and embarks on a career as a pirate. Throughout "Captain Blood," Sabatini's language is rich, ornate, and deeply descriptive. Despite a few logistical challenges, Sabatini's great style, combined with Captain Blood's engaging adventures and historical accuracy builds a yarn that is both fascinating and entertaining.

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About the author (2010)

Rafael Sabatini was born April 29, 1875 in Jesi, Italy. At a young age, Rafael was exposed to many languages, and attending school in Portugal and, as a teenager, in Switzerland. By the time he was seventeen, when he went to England to live permanently, he could speak five languages. He quickly added English and chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, "all the best stories are written in English." After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. It took Sabatini almost a quarter of century before he attained success with Scaramouche in 1921. It became an international best-seller. Captain Blood followed in 1922 and was equally as successful. Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year. While he would never achieve the success of Scaramouche and Captain Blood, Sabatini still maintained a great deal of popularity with the reading public through the decades that followed. By the 1940s, illness forced the writer to slow his prolific method of composition. However, he did write several additional works even during that time. His body of work consists of 31 novels, 8 short story colections and 6 books of poetry. He died February 13, 1950 in Switzerland. He is buried at Adelboden, Switzerland.

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