232 pp paperback with flaps, 8 b&w drawings ISBN 978 1 897959 65 7 £9.99 > about the author | | J. M. Synge Travels in Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara
Foreword by Paddy Woodworth
Illustrations by Jack B. YeatsJ.M. Synge was a tireless traveller who, while celebrating the beauties of the Irish landscape, never flinched from describing the harsh, unromantic reality of rural life. Jack B. Yeats's evocative drawings were intended to accompany these accounts of Synge's travels, and they are now published together again for the first time in 100 years.
Capturing the embers of a dying culture, the great playwright walks, drinks and talks with a rich assortment of country people, offering unforgettable descriptions of the Puck Fair at Killorglin and horse-racing on the strand near Dingle, of remote cottages and isolated fishing villages.
Seamus Heaney wrote of Synge in 'Glanmore Eclogue' that he
Was never happier than when he was on the road
With people on their uppers. Loneliness
Was his passport through the world. Midge-angels
On the face of water, the first drop before thunder …
His spirit lives for me in things like that.
Synge's wandering spirit, as well as the farmers and tinkers, weavers and boat-builders he befriended, live on in these pages, which cannot fail to delight anyone who loves Ireland and her literature.
This new edition now also includes a commemorative essay by Synge's friend and travelling companion, Jack B. Yeats.
'Synge's travel writings are particularly fascinating'
The Irish Times
'Synge's Ireland will always strike an echo'
Times Literary Supplement |
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226 pp paperback with flaps, 11 b&w line drawings, bookmark ISBN 978 1 897959 56 5 £9.99 / AUS $24.95 > about the author > view bookmark | | J. M. Synge The Aran Islands
Foreword by Julian Bell
Illustrations by Jack B. Yeats'Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves, express a life that has never found expression.' J.M. Synge did exactly as W.B. Yeats suggested and, revisiting these harsh yet beautiful specks of land off Ireland's west coast over a period of five years, created a literary masterpiece.
Synge immersed himself in the islanders' lives as they steered their curaghs through Atlantic waves, mourned their dead, celebrated weddings and suffered the horrors of eviction. The Aran Islands weaves their stories with Synge's own and the result, as Colm Tóibín has observed, is that 'Unlike most travel books of 100 years ago, it has not dated at all.'
This is the first paperback edition in which Jack B. Yeats's unforgettable drawings, commissioned for the first Dublin edition, have appeared alongside Synge's haunting prose. Samuel Beckett was a lifelong admirer of Yeats's 'extraordinary craftsmanship' before which, he believed, 'one can simply bow, wonder-struck'.
'This is travel writing of a special kind.'
Bruce Arnold, Irish Independent
'Captivating... profoundly attuned to the spirit of the place'
Times Literary Supplement |
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248 pp paperback with flaps, 1 map, full-colour author portrait by Dora Carrington ISBN 978 1 897959 63 3 £10 / US $18 / AUS $29.95 > about the author | | Gerald Brenan The Face of Spain
Afterword by Michael JacobsGerald Brenan returned to Spain in 1949 for the first time since the Civil War. He was determined to see what had become of the country he loved, to speak to ordinary people and to experience life in small towns unvisited by foreigners. He had earlier lived in a remote village in the Sierra Nevada – now he returned to a land in the grip of famine where guerrilleros roamed the mountains and thousands of people were reduced to living in caves.
Whether searching for his friend Lorca's unmarked grave, musing on the history of the great mosque in Córdoba and ancient synagogues in Toledo or chatting to provincial shopkeepers, Brenan was unfailingly perceptive. Although shadowed by police informers and harangued by Francoist priests, he was undeterred, and this witty and humane account of his visit illuminates a chapter of Spanish history that remains almost unknown. Franco's regime has now vanished, but its ghosts continue to haunt Spain. When they were alive, no one described the ogres and their victims more vividly than Gerald Brenan.
'The ideal travel book ... miraculous'
The Observer
'A descriptive writer of great gifts'
The Age (Melbourne)
'Knowledge, discernment and a most vivid pen ... compelling'
Times Literary Supplement |
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216 pp paperback with flaps, 1 map, b&w author photo by Cecil Beaton ISBN 978 1 897959 53 4 £9.99 / AUS $27.95 > about the author | | Evelyn Waugh Ninety-Two Days: Travels in Guiana and Brazil
Afterword by Pauline MelvilleIn 1932 Evelyn Waugh left the salons of Mayfair for the savannah and rainforest of what was then British Guiana. The result: classic travel-writing.
Even Waugh's comic imagination could not have invented the characters he met in South America, but only he could have described them so perfectly. A cattle-rancher who claimed to be a close friend of the Virgin Mary, a Jesuit missionary with a pet toad that ate burning cigarette ends, a gold-prospector who believed he was guided through the jungle by speaking parrots and many others live on in Waugh's mordant prose, as do his descriptions of Guyana's extraordinary landscapes. The author's journey – on foot, horseback and by boat – was extremely arduous, but he remained an unfailingly astute observer, offering a fascinating picture of the Amerindian peoples through whose lands he travelled.
In the Afterword, award-winning novelist Pauline Melville explores the connections between Waugh's experiences in the region of Guyana from which her own family hails and A Handful of Dust, one of Waugh's greatest novels, giving a fascinating insight into the creative process and the mind of the man himself.
'Exquisitely miserable'
Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
'Predictably brilliant'
The Evening Standard
'Intriguing'
Time Out
'He will be admired as long as there are people who can read'
The Daily Telegraph |
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212 pp paperback with flaps, bookmark and 1 map ISBN 978 1 897959 58 9 £9.99 / US $17.95 / AUS $27.95 > about the author > view bookmark | | Alan Winnington The Slaves of the Cool Mountains
Travels Among Head-Hunters and Slave-Owners in South-West ChinaBeijing, 1956: foreign correspondent Alan Winnington heard reports of slaves being freed in the mountains of south-west China. The following year he travelled to Yunnan province and spent several months with the head-hunting Wa and the slave-owning Norsu and Jingpaw. From that journey was born The Slaves of the Cool Mountains, which Neal Ascherson has called 'one of the classics of modern English travel writing'.
The first European to enter and leave these areas alive, Winnington met a slave-owner who assessed his value at five silver ingots ('Your age is against you, but as a curiosity you would fetch a decent price'), a head-hunter who a fortnight earlier killed a man in order to improve his own rice harvest, and a sorcerer struggling against the modern medicines sapping his authority and livelihood. Meeting recently released slaves was a scoop of which most journalists can only dream – 'Nobody will ever again be able to see them as I saw them' – and Winnington's account of their struggle to come to terms with new-found freedom is unforgettable.
'Fascinating'
New Statesman
'A clear, striking account'
Time Out
'One of Britain's greatest foreign correspondents - curious, witty and adventurous' Jonathan Mirsky, The Observer
'A fascinating study of a little known pocket of humanity'
The Age (Melbourne) |
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232 pp paperback with flaps, 1 map ISBN 978 1 897959 52 7 £9.99 / US $17.95 / AUS $27.95 > about the author | | Karl Maier Angola: Promises and LiesAngola's civil war was the longest in Africa. Once the battleground for a proxy war between the Cold War superpowers, the country was supposed to become a model for a smooth transition from armed conflict to democracy. The government, earlier backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the UNITA rebels, supported by the Americans and South Africans, would exchange bullets for ballots – but it all went wrong - UNITA's Jonas Savimbi rejected his defeat in the elections and plunged Angola back into war. The United Nations could only wring its hands, eventually negotiating a fragile new peace agreement. For most Angolans, however, the effects of a quarter of a century of violence have proved to be more enduring than the taste of peace.
Karl Maier was the Angola correspondent for The Independent and Washington Post for 10 years, and provides a fascinating analysis of the realities behind the conflict as well as a vivid eye-witness account of the devastation it brought. Whether speaking to soldiers, nurses, black-market traders or aid workers, he views Angola's strife with a rare sympathy for the ordinary people caught in the crossfire. Sceptical of both sides' promises and lies, his is a classic account of one of the civil wars that continue to plague Africa.
This updated new edition covers the massive corruption and other problems that have arisen since the ending of the war with Savimbi's death. Armed conflict has been replaced by an oil boom that has benefited only the country's elite – as Maier observes, the vast majority of Angolans now face 'a war of neglect by their rulers'.
'An accessible, balanced account'
Times Literary Supplement
'A rare, unsentimental book - compelling'
Weekly Mail (Johannesburg) |
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128 pp paperback ISBN 978 1 897959 32 9 £6.99 / US $12.99 / AUS $19.75 > about the author | | Chenjerai Hove Shebeen Tales: Messages from HarareThroughout southern Africa, shebeens are where jokes are born, news is embellished and exchanged. They are unique vantage points where men go after a day's work, both to escape from the troubled world around them and to observe and comment on it.
In Shebeen Tales, Zimbabwe's leading author offers a view of his country not from the privileged and insulated perspective of a well-heeled visitor, but that of the ordinary person who, with the help of dry wit and illegal beer, pokes fun at the rich and mighty. Struggling against madcap motorists, pompous bureaucrats and the other woes of life in the city, the man in the shebeen sees modern Africa as it really is, not as press releases or tourist brochures would have us believe.
Hove looks straight in the eye of a society suffering from AIDS, drought and economic hardship, but does not succumb to despair. With a wry sense of humour, he celebrates a people who live life to the full, laugh and sing, tell tall tales – whatever is thrown at them. In new pieces written for this edition, he discusses the vexed issue of homosexuality in Zimbabwe and also casts an amused eye at President Mugabe's wedding.
'Beautifully written – a glimpse into a rarely seen African reality'
Weekly Journal
'An intimate – occasionally painful – look at his own land … his observations about women and their place in Zimbabwean culture are particularly incisive'
Publishers Weekly |
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