NPR Most Anticipated Book of September 2026

"An elaborate, fiendishly plotted revenge tale."--CrimeReads

From Zimbabwean author George Makana Clarke, an audacious, darkly comic, and wildly entertaining epic of pirates, con men, and the enduring scars of the slave trade.

Lisbon, 1954. In the Military History Archives, a mysterious figure steals the Final Will and Testament of Garoto Bárbaro de Castro--a list of thirteen bequests, and a record of Garoto's remarkable life story. It is also a window onto many other lives connected to his, including that of the archival thief--his descendent, Nuno Bárbaro de Castro.

After stealing Garoto's Final Will and Testament, Nuno--artifact hunter, grave-robber, conman, fake veterinarian, and agent of Angolan Independence--sets off to hunt the listed artefacts, and unintentionally begins to collect the distant relatives of those mentioned in the Will, even when they don't want to be collected...

One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Count of Monte Cristo, The Wreckers is a centuries-spanning tour de force that moves between Angola, Cuba, and Louisiana's "Angola" prison to examine the scars of the transatlantic slave trade, and the consequences of prolonged civil war.