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The Death Ship

By B. Traven
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Brief Description
The Death Ship is a cult masterpiece and a darkly comic tale of survival on the high seas. Whoever survived the Yorikke could never be frightened any more during his lifetime by anything. Stateless and stranded after he loses his passport, sailor Gerald Gales flees arrest... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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The Death Ship is a cult masterpiece and a darkly comic tale of survival on the high seas.

Whoever survived the Yorikke could never be frightened any more during his lifetime by anything.

Stateless and stranded after he loses his passport, sailor Gerald Gales flees arrest and persecution across Europe, until he finally finds work on the Yorikke, a decrepit 'death ship' bound for destruction. Condemned to stoke the furnaces, Gales must navigate a labyrinth of surreal rules and the brutal realities of life at sea if he is to make it out alive.

First published in 1926 and thought to bear the traces of the mysterious author B. Traven's own experience of migrating to Mexico, The Death Ship is a darkly absurd, raging tale about what it takes to survive when life is cheap.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780241822210

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 20 August 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Classics

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 23.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 300g

Pages: 400

Collections

B. Traven Classic Fiction Classic General Fiction Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Penguin Books Penguin Classics Pre-order Books Pre-order General Fiction Pre-orders Pre-orders by Release Date

About the Author

Little is known for certain about the life of B. Traven; a prolific writer, he is best known for his beloved adventure novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the Jungle Novels, a series set during and after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, with proletarian, anarchist themes. During his lifetime, he was variously (and incorrectly) identified as the son of Kaiser Wilhelm I, or a North German brickmaker, but it is now believed that he was born Moritz Rathenau in Germany in 1882, the illegitimate son of Emil Rathenau, the founder of AEG and Helen Mareck, an Irish actress. He lived for some time as Ret Marut, a merchant seaman, actor, journalist and politician, and left Germany in 1923 after having been sentenced to death for his part in the Bavarian Revolution. He arrived in Mexico in 1924, where he dedicated himself to writing full time. Traven married Rosa Elena Lujan in 1957 and died in Mexico City in 1969.

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