Theatre Of Fish: Travels through Newfoundland and Labrador [Lingua Inglese] - Rilegato

Gimlette, John

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0091795192 ISBN 13: 9780091795191

Casa editrice: Hutchinson, 2005

Riassunto

John Gimlette's journey across this awesome and often brutal western extreme of the Americas broadly mirrors that of Dr Eliot Curwen, his great-grandfather, who spent a summer there as a doctor in 1893, and who was witness to some of the most beautiful ice and cruellest poverty in the British Empire. Using Curwen's extraordinarily frank journal John Gimlette revisits the places the doctor encountered and along the way explores his own links with this brutal land. At the heart of the book, however, are the present-day inhabitants of these shores. Descended from last-hope Irishmen, outlaws, navy deserters and fishermen from Jersey and Dorset, these 'outporters' are a warm, salty, witty and exuberant breed. They often speak with the accent and idioms of the original colonists, sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes just plain impenetrable. Theirs is a bizarre story; of houses (or 'saltboxes') that can be dragged across land or floated over the sea; of eating habits inherited from seventeenth-century sailors (salt beef, rum pease-pudding and molasses); of Labradorians sealed in ice from October to June; of fishing villages that produced a diva to sing with Verdi and of their own illicit, impromptu dramatics, the Mummers.

Su questo libro

Recensione

Praise for John Gimlette:
“Theatre of Fish is peopled with odd characters, both historical and very much alive, who make walk-on appearances in a book rich with bizarre incident and anecdotes.”
–Sarah Hampson, Globe and Mail

“Must reading for anyone who wants to understand Canada’s last province.”
–Yvonne Crittenden, The Toronto Sun

“But as a descriptive writer, a master of the telling observation and the well-chosen epithet, he is in the highest class.”
–Max Davidson, The Daily Telegraph
From the Trade Paperback edition.

L'autore

John Gimlette is a well-established travel writer, having won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award. When not traveling, he practices as a barrister in London.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Hutchinson
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0091795192
• ISBN 13: 9780091795191
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 384