Brando's pirate romp

Just over a year after Marlon Brando's death, publisher Alfred Knopf plans to put out a novel that the screen legend co-authored 30 years ago about a pirate on the South Seas.

Described as a "rollicking, swashbuckling, delectable romp of a novel", Fan-Tan was written by Brando in the 1970s with screenwriter and director Donald Cammell.

It tells the tale of an eccentric, early 20th-century pirate, a character which apparently bears some similarities to its creator, the publisher says.