Nigel Cliff

Forthcoming · 2027 · Harper US · HarperNorth UK

The LostContinent

The Quest for Earth’s Greatest Secret at the Bottom of the World

The story of an idea that began in ancient Greece and took sail in the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

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Nigel Cliff, portrait
Photograph: Xu Sidi
01 — The author

Historian, biographer, and translator, Nigel Cliff writes narrative nonfiction about encounters between peoples and cultures that shaped our shared world.

A former theatre and film critic for The Times, he is the author of The Shakespeare Riots, The Last Crusade and Moscow Nights, and the translator of Marco Polo’s Travels for Penguin Classics. His books have been published in a dozen languages. He lives in London.

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02 — Reviewed in
  • The New York Times
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • The New Yorker
  • The Economist
  • London Review of Books
  • The Sunday Times
  • The Spectator
  • Los Angeles Times
  • The Washington Post
  • The Boston Globe
  • BBC Radio 4
  • NPR
  • National Book Critics Circle AwardFinalist · Moscow Nights
  • New York Times Notable BookThe Last Crusade
  • National Award for Arts WritingFinalist · The Shakespeare Riots
  • PEN/Hessell-Tiltman PrizeShortlist · The Last Crusade

★ Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist and Kirkus

03 — Books 01 / 05
The Lost Continent by Nigel Cliff — book cover showing an eighteenth-century painting of a Pacific bay cut into the shape of an imagined southern continent
01 — 2027 · Forthcoming

The Lost Continent

The Quest for Earth’s Greatest Secret at the Bottom of the World

The story of an idea that began in ancient Greece and took sail in the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Discover the book
Moscow Nights by Nigel Cliff — book cover showing Van Cliburn at the piano before a Moscow audience
02 — 2016

Moscow Nights

The Van Cliburn Story — How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War

The pianist who, for a moment, bridged two dangerously hostile powers.

About the book
Marco Polo, The Travels — Penguin Clothbound Classics edition, black cloth with gold chrysanthemums
03 — 2015

Marco PoloThe Travels

A new translation and critical edition

The first completely new English translation in over fifty years.

About the book
The Last Crusade by Nigel Cliff — book cover showing Portuguese ships with red crusader crosses on their sails
04 — 2011

The Last Crusade

The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama

A running sea battle that would change the fate of three continents.

About the book
The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff — book cover with a bird’s-eye view of nineteenth-century New York
05 — 2007

The Shakespeare Riots

Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America

One of the bloodiest incidents in New York’s history, ignited by two Shakespearean actors.

About the book

Scroll through the books

“It is both entertaining and illuminating, and Cliff tells it beautifully.”

The Wall Street Journal · on Moscow Nights
04 — Forthcoming

The quest for Earth’s greatest secret at the bottom of the world

Ptolemy’s world map, fifteenth-century manuscript — the Indian Ocean enclosed by an unknown southern land
Ptolemy, Geographia, 15th-century copy
Vallard atlas, 1547 — Terre Australe, a richly imagined southern shore
Vallard Atlas, Dieppe, 1547
Abraham Ortelius, Typus Orbis Terrarum, 1570 — the great southern land marked Terra Australis Nondum Cognita
Ortelius, Typus Orbis Terrarum, 1570
Hondius, Polus Antarcticus, c. 1640 — the unknown southern pole
Hondius, Polus Antarcticus, c. 1640

The story of an idea that began in ancient Greece and took sail in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Harper US and HarperNorth UK, 2027.

About The Lost Continent
05 — News & Events All news & events