The Navigator by Morris West (1976, Hardcover)

The Navigator
by Morris West
Publisher: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
Copyright 1976
Book Club Edition

All of us, at some time or another, dream of escaping from today's threatening world.  Most of us never do.  But for the adventurous spirit, hero or misfit, there is still the challenge of distant places, dangerous enterprises, new beginnings.

The Navigator is the story of one man and his companions who set out on such a quest to find the last unknown place on earth.

Gunnar Thorkild, the central figure of the novel, is a character of complex, heroic dimension.  He is half-Polynesian, half-European, grandson of a great Polynesian navigator, inheritor of two thousand years of Pacific legend.  He is also a dedicated scholar who teaches at the University of Hawaii.

His colleagues discredit him and refuse him promotion when he publishes a paper claiming that in the vast, empty spaces of the Pacific there exists a mysterious, lost island known only to the great chiefs and navigators of the Polynesian people.  His own grandfather, when his time comes, will go there to die.  Scorned by the academic world, Thorkild has only two choices:  live as a shamed scholar or prove that this island exists.

And so the strong, impulsive, and proud Gunnar Thorkild -- a man of enormous civilization who worships his primitive past -- gives up his life in order to find it.

With the help of a wealthy patron, he secures a sailing ship, handpicks a group of students, men and women, and together with his patron's friends and crew, they set out to follow the track of the ancient navigators who traversed the great ocean without charts or compass.

The story of their voyage, their discovery, their struggle for survival as a community make this a novel of epic proportions -- a tale of high adventure, ancient mystery, and modern men and women rediscovering love, comradeship, and tribal life, in the face of primal terrors.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  NO Dust cover.  Pages are tanned and darkening from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper. 

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