The Last Days of Dom Sebastian by Greg Barron (Paperback)

The Last Days of Dom Sebastian is now available in paperback. It's a beautifully presented book made to last, and a big, bold adventure story in the vein of Wilbur Smith.

440 pages. ISBN: 9780648733874

From Medieval Portugal to Australia's Kimberley, this is a unique story of shipwreck, discovery and adventure that will keep you turning the pages long into the night.

About the book:

How can I rest until this story is told? Can I let such a tale slip unnoticed into history? Or allow men to take liberties, inventing lies about that which is precious to me? I, Luis Pereira, Dom Sebastian’s friend and confessor, can alone let the truth stand for posterity…

So begins our narrator's account of The Last Days of Dom Sebastian, the story of the Portuguese 'hidden king,' opening with defeat and ignominy in Morocco, then a desperate flight across the sea to that shadowy continent once known as Grão-Java, or the Austral Land. The story raises another possibility in a long line of plausible European 'discoveries' of Australia, and deals with the darkest reaches of the human heart.

Modern day archaeologist, Francis da Costa, is obsessed with exploring his Portuguese heritage and the first, as yet unrecorded European landings on Australian soil. Francis unravels the story of Dom Sebastian's escape across two vast oceans, narrated by a gentle Dominican priest who strives to protect the young woman he loves most in the world. Their ship, the Nossa Senhora dos Anjos, her crew ravaged by disease and starvation, drifts towards Australia's shores, still pursued by the highly trained guarda-costras, minions of Cardinal Henrique, who has seized the throne.

Together with the beautiful Nicolá Massane, Professor of Archaeology at Lisbon University, Francis follows the trail to a valley surrounded by cliffs of red stone. Hidden ruins tell of how the disenfranchised king found refuge there. Francis stumbles closer to the truth, forced to confront the demons that have plagued him all his life, and to grapple with the truth of the death of his father.

The Kimberley landscape has memories of its own. The past, written in blood on the soil, is neither inviting nor pleasant. Instead it is deeply malevolent, bowed over with weighty memories of violence, treachery and death.

Dom Sebastian faces his enemy on a harsh and remote battleground, unaware that treachery from an apparently loyal friend will soon take his life, while Francis slips deeper into the grip of the saudade, searching for the tomb of a king, hearing the voices of the dead as if they still walked the earth. Past and present become one. Both medieval and modern threads build towards a shattering and simultaneous climax that will thrill the reader and resonate long after the book is closed.

The Last Days of Dom Sebastian is a story of human frailty, adventure and conflict, yet a rumination on the darker side of the human psyche, and, most importantly, on the unseen marks each of us leaves on the landscape when our time on earth is done.