Brando novel finally released

A novel written by Marlon Brando and director Donald Cammell is finally released today, a year after Brando died and nine years after Cammell killed himself.

Fan Tan, about a pirate imprisoned in a Hong Kong prison in the 1920s, was written by the pair as a screenplay in the 1970s, before they decided to turn it into a book.

However, The Godfather star Brando and Performance film-maker Cammell fell out and never managed to finish the novel, which has a final chapter written by veteran film critic David Thomson based on notes they had made.

Kathy Zuckerman, from publisher Alfred A Knopf, says: "It is apparently autobiographical. You can almost hear Brando's voice in the narration.

"Of course, it's enhanced by its celebrity authorship, but it definitely works on its own as a pirate tale set in the 1920s."

Fan Tan is released in the US in September.