The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

The Lost City of Z describes John Hemming as “the distinguished historian of Brazilian Indians and a former director of the Royal Geographical Society” (24). When Grann calls Hemming to inquire about Fawcett, Hemming replies by asking if Grann is “one of those Fawcett lunatics” (54-55).

Hemming’s disdain for Fawcett and Fawcett-enthusiasts is not easily dismissed. An accomplished expert, Hemming has published Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (1978), Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians (1987), and Die If You Must: Brazilian Indians in the Twentieth Century (2003)--three books on Amazonian Indigenous peoples totaling more than two-thousand pages. Hemming is perhaps the world’s foremost scholar on the subject.

In response to the book’s 2017 Hollywood adaptation, Hemming penned a scathing critique entitled “The Lost City of Z is a very long way from a true story–and I should know.” Hemming describes Fawcett as “a surveyor who never discovered anything,” a “racist,” and an “incompetent.” Grann, meanwhile, “had no excuse” for misrepresenting Fawcett’s encounters with Indigenous peoples. In short, The Lost City of Z constitutes “artistic license and hype of an absurd order.”

Two factors might serve to mitigate Hemming’s criticism. First, Hemming’s father served under Fawcett in World War One, and Hemming’s father came to despise Fawcett, in part because Hemming’s father had learned to triangulate the enemy’s position using mathematics while Fawcett, who held a higher rank, relied on a Ouija board. Second, scholars often succumb to resentment when journalists and other non-experts sensationalize the subject to which those scholars have devoted their careers, particularly when the sensationalized version dominates the public discourse. Caveats notwithstanding, Hemming’s authoritative voice would banish The Lost City of Z into the realm of fiction.