Description
Book SynopsisWe owe you our lives, Sergeant, but you are our worst nightmare . . .
Burma, 1852. Sergeant Arthur Bowman, a sergeant in the East India Company, is sent on a secret mission during the Second Anglo-Burmese War. But the expedition is foiled - his men are captured and tortured. Throughout their ordeal, a single word becomes Bowman''s mantra, a word that will stiffen their powers of endurance in the face of unimaginable suffering: Survival. But for all that, only a handful escape with their lives.
Some years later in London, battling his ghosts through a haze of alcohol and opium, Bowman discovers a mutilated corpse in a sewer. The victim appears to have been subjected to the same torments as Bowman endured in the Burmese jungle. And the word Survival has been daubed in blood by the body''s side. Persuaded that the culprit is one of the men who shared his captivity, Bowman resolves to hunt him down.
From the Burmese jungle to the slums of London to the conque
Trade Review
A great adventure story . . . The excellent Three Thousand Horsepower bears the mark of Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson . . . Antonin Varenne has dealt a masterstroke -- François Busnel * L'Express *
An adventure story, a crime novel, a war story and a western ... This book is a magnificent achievement -- Thomas Delecroix * Page *
A flamboyant adventure story ... a powerful novel that poses new questions about male violence * Livres Hebdo *
A literary firework: Antonin Varenne has written one of the most thrilling, most original books of the year -- Julien Bisson * Lire *
Unique, hair-raising, jam-packed, shocking, even unsettling, the excellent Three Thousand Horsepower is a new sensation -- Clémentine Thiebault and Mikaël Demets * Le Monde *
Antonin Varenne heralds the return of the great adventure novel. Magnificent -- Marie Rogatien * Figaro magazine *
Remarkable ... A novel that will haunt you long after you finish reading it -- R.R. * La Revue *
Antonin Varenne's Retribution Road is part Bernard Cornwell, part John le Carré and all of a hell of a read. Few authors have the chops to take on a historical epic, a serial killer thriller and an intimate character study but Varenne's latest novel should place him at the very top of every reading list. -- Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries
