Before there was Jaws, there was QUINT. This powerful and brilliant literary novel takes a character who, through Peter Benchley's novel and particularly Steven Spielberg's film, has become etched in our cultural imagination: Quint, the taciturn and grizzled sea captain who survived the shark-ridden sinking of the USS Indianapolis only to meet his end in the maw of a Great White at the end of JAWS. From the very first line, Quint's voice is fresh, vivid and immediately transfixing. From his early seafaring days, via the life-altering events of 1945 to his arrival on Amity, this is a glorious literary picaresque with echoes of Hemingway.