Brando's novel to be published
2005-08-03 13:52
New York - Little more than a year after Marlon Brando's death, US publisher Alfred A Knopf plans to put out a novel that the screen legend co-authored 30 years ago about a pirate on the South Seas.
Fan-Tan, which began life as a film treatment, will be published in early September, adding another facet to the legacy of the reclusive Brando who died on July 1, last year.
Described on the Knopf website as a "rollicking, swashbuckling, delectable romp of a novel", Fan-Tan was written by Brando in the 1970s together with the screenwriter and director Donald Cammell, who committed suicide in 1996.
It tells the tale of Anatole "Annie" Doultry an eccentric, physically imposing, early 20th century pirate and his adventures on the high seas from the Philippines to Shanghai.
The hero's character and his penchant for Asian woman bear more than a passing resemblance to his celebrity creator, according to Kathy Zuckerman, the Knopf publicist in charge of the title.
"It is apparently autobiographical ... certainly the personality. You can almost hear Brando's voice in the narration," said Zuckerman, who insisted that the novel was more that just a mere curiosity.
"Of course, it's enhanced by its celebrity authorship, but it definitely works on its own as a pirate tale set in the 20s," she said.
The industry magazine Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying "enthralled readers will be swinging from the rigging along with the rest of the pirates in this rollicking high-seas saga."
In its submitted form, the novel lacked an ending and a final chapter was provided by film historian David Thomson, who also edited the book.
"It wasn't complete, but there was an outline for the ending. It just had to be put into prose form," Zuckerman said.
Brando met Cammell, a painter, in Paris in 1957 where he was filming The Young Lions. Cammell later moved into film, and is best known for co-directing with Nicolas Roeg the 1970 movie Performance starring Mick Jagger.
The two began Fan-Tan as a potential screenplay but, at Cammell's suggestion, eventually turned it into a novel. At one point they received a $100 000 (about R646 200) advance, but personal rifts between the authors hampered publication.
Following Brando's death, the manuscript was offered to Knopf by the Brando and Cammell estates.
- SAPA