The Outlaw Ocean

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Outlaw Ocean
is a riveting, adrenalin-fuelled tour of a vast, lawless and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas.


There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to the unbridled extremes of human behaviour and activity.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion-providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways: drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world and their risk-fraught lives. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.

Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.

(c) 2019, Ian Urbina (P) Penguin Audio 2019

Critics Review

Gripping and shocking by turns … Most of the book clips along with the pace of a thriller … stomach-churningly tense … as outlandish and as thrilling as a heist film
The Times
Just incredible
Naomi Klein
Urbina has written an astonishing book about a world most of us don't even know exists. These are dispatches from the lawless ocean - of traffickers, slaves, heroes, gangsters, crooks and scoundrels - which will amaze, enthral and appal you
Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland
Incredible, readable, riveting
Wall Street Journal
You simply have to read this
Washington Post
Staggering
Wired
[A] remarkable piece of reportage… Gripping, visceral and often deeply shocking
Big Issue

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