Eland Publishing Ltd – The Bell Bookshop

Affair of the Heart, An

Emma — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Despite personal tragedy, occupation and civil war, Powell’s affair of the heart continued. She returned time and again through the ’40s and ’50s, and with each visit there was a reconciliation with her idyllic memories, despite the changing reality of Greece. Both with Hunfry and without, she explored remote mountains in the company of shepherds, isolated stretches of coast and island with local fishermen and olive-dotted hillsides with their subsistence farmers.

Purple Land: An Adventure in Uruguay – the Banda Oriental

Emma — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Purple Land is a romantic novel set in the war-torn borderlands of Uruguay, the Banda Oriental. The story of Richard Lamb, an idealistic young Englishman, it begins with his abduction of Paquita and their escape from the vengeance of her Argentine father. Finding refuge in Montevideo, he is catapulted into a series of picaresque adventures: horse-stealing, duelling, escaping prison, and fighting on the losing side of a civil war, all the while falling constantly and unsuitably in love. Rooted in Hudson’s evocation of the simplicity and dignity of life on the pampas as well as his masterful depiction of its wildlife and landscape, The Purple Land is the first modern ‘road novel’. It is also a narrative of transformation, the Creolisation of an Englishman, redeemed by the heightened exuberance, energy, warmth and innate humanity of South America.

So It Goes: Travels in the Aran Isles, Xian and places in between

Emma — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

What makes Nicolas Bouvier such a well-loved travel writer is his exquisite sensitivity to the beauties of life, and his ability to capture those elusive moments in a style that is light, yet pregnant with wonder. Whether he’s delirious in the wintery Aran Isles, where the air ‘unites the virtues of champagne, cocaine, caffeine, and the ecstasy of love’ or singing the praises of his Chinese tour guide, this collection of his shorter travel pieces brims with his particular joie de vivre.

Coasting

Emma — Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Coasting round Britain single-handed in an antique two-masted sailing boat, Jonathan Raban conducts a masterly exploration of England and the English at ttime of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War. He moves seamlessly between awkward memories of childhood as the son of a vicar, a vivid chronicle of the shape-shifting sea and incisive descriptions of the people and communities he encounters. As he faces his terror of racing water, eddies, offshore sandbars andferries on a collision course, so he navigates the complex and turbulent waters ohis own middle age. Coasting is a fearless attempt to discover the meaning of belonging and of his English homeland.

Old Glory: An American Journey

Emma — Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Navigating the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, Raban opens himself to experience the river in all her turbulent and unpredictable old glory. Going wherever the current takes him, he joins a coon-hunt in Savana, falls for a girl in St Louis, worships with black Baptists in Memphis, hangs out with the housewives of Pemiscot and the hog-king of Dubuque. Through tears of laughter, we are led into the heartland of America – with its hunger and hospitality, its inventive energy and its charming lethargy – and come to know something of its soul. The journey is as much the story of Raban as it is of the Mississippi. Navigating the dangerous, ever-changing waters in an unsuitably fragile aluminium skiff, he immerses himself with an irresistible emotional intensity as he tries to give shape to the river and the story – finding himself by turns vulnerable, curious, angry and, like all of us, sometimes foolishly in love.

On Persephone’s Island: A Sicilian Journal

Emma — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This is a year of Sicilian life, its seasons and its sacred festivals, its gorgeous fruits and demanding family life, its casual assassinations and village feasts, its weather and the neighbours. It chronicles a life divided between an apartment in the city of Palermo with the weekends and summer devoted to sustaining life in an old family farm. What makes this journal truly exceptional is that Mary Simeti is both an outsider, (an American who had studied medieval history and worked as a volunteer on a social welfare programme) and an insider. For this journal was written after twenty years of immersion in Sicilian life, as wife to a Sicilian, mother to two Sicilian teenagers, as gardener, cook and carer for a suspicious mother-in- law.

Dinner of Herbs: Village Life in 1960s Turkey

Emma — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This travel writing is based on the author's remarkable experiences in remote Anatolia in the 1960s, when she spent the better part of a year living with a local peasant family. It includes striking descriptions and photographs.

The Japanese Chronicles

Emma — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

'The Japanese Chronicles' is a distillation of Bouvier's lifelong quest for Japan and his many travles, so that the reader is able to discover the country through the eyes of both a passionate young man, the sensual appreciation of a middle-aged artist, and the serenity of an experienced writer.