The 'Grosvenor' was one of the finest East Indiamen of her day, a grand three-masted square-rigger of 741 tons bristling with 26 cannon. When she ran aground on the treacherous coast of south-east Africa, an astonishing number of her crew and passengers, including women and children, reached the shore safely. But the castaways were hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost - and utterly ignorant of their surroundings and the people among whom they found themselves.

Stephen Taylor pieces together this extraordinary saga with tremendous narrative flair. Drawing upon much new research, he sifts the myths that became attached to the 'Grosvenor' from a reality that is no less gripping. Taking the reader to the heart of what is now the Wild Coast of Pondoland, The Caliban Shore reveals the misunderstandings that led to tragedy, tells the story of those who escaped and unravels the mystery of those who stayed.

"'A wonderful book, hugely satisfying on many levels - as a survival-and-ordeal chronicle, as social history, as anthropology, and an early foray into the exotic, but most of all as an adventure' Paul Theroux"

Stephen Taylor grew up in South Africa, and after moving to Britain worked as a foreign correspondent for The Times in Africa, Asia and Australia. He is the author of several celebrated books on Africa, including The Mighty Nimrod and Livingstone's Tribe: A Journey from Zanzibar to the Cape. The Caliban Shore was called 'a wonderful book' by Paul Theroux and his most recent book, Storm and Conquest, was called 'a triumph . . . a ripping yarn founded on original research' in the Guardian.