Overview

In 1916, a nondescript freighter left Germany carrying 465 submarine mines, 16 torpedoes, 8 cannons, 1,400 shells, a seaplane, and 346 men who believed they were embarking on a suicide mission. That ship became known to Allied forces as the Wolf, and by the time it returned to Germany more than a year later it was home to more than 800 men, women, and children from twenty-five different nations, including its own crew. Led by Captain Karl August Nerger, an honorable man who sank more than thirty Allied ships but spared the crews and passengers on board by taking them prisoner, the Wolf traveled 64,000 miles and remained at sea for fifteen months without pulling into port. Capturing 400 prisoners, the Wolf became home to an extraordinary collection of humanity, from the secret lover of W. Somerset Maugham to a six-year-old American girl who was adopted as a mascot by the German crew. Forced to survive on plundered food, facing death from scurvy, and hunted by the combined navies of five Allied nations, the Germans and their prisoners came to share a close bond. The Wolf is a gripping war narrative, painting a rich, detailed picture of a world profoundly shaped by global conflict.

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9798200113286

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Reviews

"Page meets the double challenge of credibly delivering British English and the many German names and words. He navigates between the languages flawlessly, adding the perfect touches of bilingualism to a little-known tale of the Great War.-- ""AudioFile"" The Wolf is an extraordinary work of storytelling and scholarship. From the very first pages, Guilliatt and Hohnen snap this ship's dramatic journey into brilliant focus, and you feel for these people, get to know them, and you root for them to survive. This is history brought vividly to life. This otherwise unknown story of the Great War has found its great chroniclers."" -- ""Doug Stanton, author of Horse Soldiers and In Harm's Way"" The Wolf is one of the strangest, and strangely thrilling, war-at-sea adventures I have ever read. It captures the excitement but also the moral ambiguity of war, with intriguing characters cast upon a vast stage."" -- ""Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945"" ""To the short list of must-read nautical adventures, add Guilliatt's and Hohnen's The Wolf, a chronicle worthy of Conrad. I thought I was a student of military and naval history, but until I read this powerful and engrossing tale of tragedy, survival and heroism I had no idea that such an epic journey had occurred. Taut, poignant, and evocative, you can taste the salt wind in your face and smell the blood in the water, but you can't put the book down."" -- ""Robert Drury, coauthor, Halsey's Typhoon: The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, and an Untold Rescue"""

Author Information

Richard Guilliatt has been a journalist for thirty years and is the author of the book Talk of the Devil? Repressed Memory and the Ritual Abuse Witch-Hunt. Born in the United Kingdom, he was a feature writer at the Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, before moving to New York in 1986 to work as a freelance writer. His work has appeared in many leading newspapers and magazines, including the Independent, the Sunday Times Magazine, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently a staff writer at the Weekend Australian Magazine in Sydney. In 2000, he won the Walkley Award, Australia's highest award for magazine feature writing. Peter Hohnen studied history and law at the Australian National University and was a partner in a prominent Canberra law firm for twenty years. A commander in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve for two decades, he was posted to Cambridge University in 1999 to study the law of the sea and the laws of armed conflict as a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. On his return to Australia he was awarded a master's degree in law from ANU in 2002. He has been an independent legal consultant to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and has made several contributions to the Australian Dictionary of Biography. His great-uncle, Alexander Ross Ainsworth, was chief engineer aboard the steamship Matunga when it was captured by SMS Wolf in August 1917. Michael Page has been recording audiobooks since 1984 and has over two hundred titles to his credit. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. As a professional actor, he has performed regularly since 1998 with the Peterborough Players in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He is a professor of theater at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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