Notes from the Cévennes

Notes from the Cévennes PDF Author: Adam Thorpe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472951301
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Adam Thorpe's home for the past 25 years has been an old house in the Cévennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France. Prior to this, in an ancient millhouse in the oxbow of a Cévenol river, he wrote the novel that would become the Booker Prize-nominated Ulverton, now a Vintage Classic. In more recent writing Thorpe has explored the Cévennes, drawing on the legends, history and above all the people of this part of France for his inspiration. In his charming journal, Notes from the Cévennes, Thorpe takes up these themes, writing about his surroundings, the village and his house at the heart of it, as well as the contrasts of city life in nearby Nîmes. In particular he is interested in how the past leaves impressions – marks – on our landscape and on us. What do we find in the grass, earth and stone beneath our feet and in the objects around us? How do they tie us to our forebears? What traces have been left behind and what marks do we leave now? He finds a fossil imprinted in the single worked stone of his house's front doorstep, explores the attic once used as a silk factory and contemplates the stamp of a chance paw in a fragment of Roman roof-tile. Elsewhere, he ponders mutilated fleur-de-lys (French royalist symbols) in his study door and unwittingly uses the tomb-rail of two sisters buried in the garden as a gazebo. Then there are the personal fragments that make up a life and a family history: memories dredged up by 'dusty toys, dried-up poster paints, a painted clay lump in the bottom of a box.' Part celebration of both rustic and urban France, part memoir, Thorpe's humorous and precise prose shows a wonderful stylist at work, recalling classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.

Notes from the Cévennes

Notes from the Cévennes PDF Author: Adam Thorpe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472966317
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Leaving London's cosmopolitanism in 1990 for a new life in rural south-west France, Adam Thorpe settled with his family in an ancient part of the Cévennes, a rugged landscape between the mountains and the sea. Here, amongst memories of religious conflict and Nazi savagery, alongside escapees of the 1968 Paris revolts and villagers deeply committed to their inheritance, Thorpe now makes his life as a writer. In his memoir Thorpe describes an author's existence embedded within an almost unrecognisably rustic setting and an impoverished yet proud local community. At the heart of his amusing yet profound account is a deep affection for the natural environment and the people that surround him, as well as a genuine fear for what the future may hold for them both.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes PDF Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Publisher: Cosimo Classics
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
On 23 September 1878 Stevenson set out from Le Monastier in the Haut Loire, to tramp through the wild region of the Cevennes. His only companion was a small donkey to carry basic necessities, and a commodious "sleeping sack". In the next 12 days, at a pace dictated by the donkey and carrying most of the supplies himself, he travelled 120 miles across rivers, mountains and forests. His stylish and witty account was published in 1879.

The Cevennes Journal

The Cevennes Journal PDF Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1780576870
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
'For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.' - RLS In September 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson travelled by donkey through the Cevennes region of France. For personal memory - and, as it happens, for literary posterity - the young Stevenson recorded copious notes on his journey as he travelled. Some of these witty and incisive impressions were subsequently published in Travels With A Donkey. The remainder, however, didn't find its way into print until the first publication of The Cevennes Journal in 1978, one hundred years later. This travelogue, which also includes several of Stevenson's previously unpublished sketches of the region, provides both a unique socio-historical document and an important piece of literature.

A Book of the Cevennes

A Book of the Cevennes PDF Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cévennes Mountains (France)
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description

The Olive Farm

The Olive Farm PDF Author: Carol Drinkwater
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142001309
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
When Carol Drinkwater and her fiancé, Michel, are given the opportunity to purchase ten acres of an abandoned olive farm in the South of France, they find the region's splendor impossible to resist. Using their entire savings as a down payment, the couple embark on an adventure that brings them in contact with the charming countryside of Provence, its querulous personalities, petty bureaucracies, and extraordinary wildlife. From the glamour of Cannes and the Isles of Lérins to the charm of her own small plot of land-which she transforms from overgrown weeds into a thriving farm-Drinkwater triumphantly relates how she realized her dream of a peaceful, meaningful life.

The Rings of Saturn

The Rings of Saturn PDF Author: W. G. Sebald
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 081122130X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
"The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."

Old Calabria

Old Calabria PDF Author: Norman Douglas
Publisher: Double 9 Books
ISBN: 9789358017519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"Old Calabria" is a travelogue written by Norman Douglas. The book is an account of the author's journey through the rugged and remote region of Calabria, located in the southern part of Italy. In the book, Douglas vividly describes the landscape, culture, and people of Calabria, which at the time was largely unknown and undiscovered by tourists. He chronicles his travels through small villages and towns, sharing his observations and encounters with the locals, their customs, and their way of life. Douglas also delves into the history and mythology of the region, recounting tales of Greek and Roman gods, as well as the legendary bandits who once roamed the area. He discusses the region's food, music, and religious festivals, providing readers with a rich and immersive experience of Calabria's unique culture. Throughout the book, Douglas's writing is infused with humor and wit, as he shares his opinions and critiques of the region and its people.
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