The Great Eastern

"My favorite read of the year..."—Keegan-Michael Key, Top Ten Picks, New York Times

 A dazzling, inventive literary adventure story in which Captain Ahab confronts Captain Nemo and the dark cultural stories represented by both characters are revealed in cliffhanger fashion.

A sprawling adventure pitting two of literature's most iconic anti-heroes against each other: Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab. Caught between them: real-life British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the century's greatest ship, The Great Eastern. But when he's kidnapped by Nemo to help design a submarine with which to fight the laying of the Translatlantic cable - linking the two colonialist forces Nemo hates, England and the US - Brunel finds himself going up against his own ship, and the strange man hired to protect it, Captain Ahab, in a battle for the soul of the 19th century.

Howard A. Rodman is Past President of the Writers Guild of America West; a professor of screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts; and an artistic director of the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. Among his screenwriting credits, he wrote SAVAGE GRACE, starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, and AUGUST, featuring Josh Hartnett, Naomie Harris, Rip Torn, and David Bowie. He also wrote JOE GOULD'S SECRET, the opening night film of the Sundance Film Festival. Rodman's previous novel, DESTINY EXPRESS, was set in the pre-War German filmmaking community: Thomas Pynchon called it "daringly imagined, darkly romantic--a moral thriller."