Gold

This sprawling, adventuresome historical novel examines the life of a Swiss pioneer driven by greed and his downfall during the California Gold Rush.

John Sutter is perhaps best known today for an accidental discovery that occurred on his California property in 1848. When huge deposits of gold were revealed at Sutter’s Mill, hordes of would-be miners descended on Sutter’s previously unrivaled domain. In Gold, the renowned Swiss poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars brings his inimitable style to Sutter’s life.

A bankrupt paper maker, Sutter abandons his family in his native Switzerland to pursue his fortune in America. In this inventively fictionalized tale, full of wildly witty and vivid prose, Cendrars follows the man from New York to California—where he is on the verge of becoming the richest man in the world—before the discovery of gold brings about his downfall.

First published in French in 1925, Gold was the basis for the classic Western film Sutter’s Gold.