Author Patrick O’Brian (1914-2000) is best known for his best-selling and well-loved Aubrey and Maturin books, a series of historical fiction novels about Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin and their adventures on the high seas during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. But long before O’Brian began richly describing the lives of Aubrey and Maturin, he was just a sickly kid passing the time with pen, paper, and imagination. Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda-Leopard, is his first published novel, written when he was just twelve years old and published at the tender age of fifteen. It’s a slim little book, but it already demonstrates the O’Brian uncanny ability to transform stiff facts into detailed storytelling. Caesar is a panda-leopard, the son of the union between a male panda bear and a female snow leopard. Caesar himself has more of the leopard in him, since he begins stalking, hunting, and killing almost as soon as he can toddle out of his cave after his mother. Caesar’s adventures include forest fires, battles with wild boars and wolves, the hunting of humans, capture by humans, a stint in a cage followed by a trusting relationship with a man, and his eventual return to the wild. Nature is indeed “red of tooth and claw;” young O’Brian was clearly in favor of an unsentimental narrative style. The writing is matter-of-fact, without any contemplation or reflection, though there is plenty of dry wit and—it is clearly the work of an adolescent, but the attention to detail and the fascination with the natural world still make for a compelling read, particularly for O’Brian’s many die-hard fans.

posted Jan 15, 2010 at 1:53PM

 Add a Comment