Island People (eBook)

The Caribbean and the World

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
Canongate Books (Verlag)
9781782115601 (ISBN)

Infos

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing AwardsClustered together in azure-blue waters are a collection of little islands whose culture, history and people have touched every corner of the world. From the moment Columbus gazed out at what he mistook for India, and wrote in his journal of 'the most beautiful land that human eyes have ever seen,' the Caribbean has been the subject of fantasies, myths and daydreams. It was claimed, and its societies were built to enrich old Europe, and much later its beaches were splashed across billboards advertising fizzy drinks, its towns and people pictured in holiday brochures.But these islands are so much more than gloss, white sand and palm trees, they form a region rich in colour, beauty and strength. Home of the Rastafarian faith, Che Guevara's stomping ground and birthplace of reggae, the Caribbean has produced some of the world's most famous artists, activists, writers, musicians and sportsmen - from Usain Bolt to Bob Marley and from Harry Belafonte to V. S. Naipaul. In the pages of Island People we hear the voices of the Caribbean people, explore their home and learn what it means to them, and to the world. In this fascinating and absorbing book, the product of almost a decade of travel and intense study, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro strips away the fantasy and myth to expose the real islands, and the real people, that make up the Caribbean.

Autor

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York, Harper's, the Believer, Artforum, and the Nation, among many other publications. Educated at Yale and Berkeley, he is the co-editor, with Rebecca Solnit, of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, and a visiting scholar at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge. This is his first book.

Rezensionen

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro possesses both a humanist's irrepressible empathy and a journalist's necessary skepticism. He reports carefully, researches exhaustively, cares deeply, and writes beautifully

One of those rare writers who bridges worlds - between deep scholarship and lively and accessible writing, between islands and mainlands, between big ideas and precise details, between history and possibility

Many have tried this before - to catch the volatile, beautiful, and relentlessly shifting Caribbean before it slips from their fingers, but nobody has ever succeeded as dazzlingly as Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Illuminates, like no other book I've read, the bizarre history and the complex present of the nations of the Caribbean. Written with passion and joyful music in the prose, Island People will become an indispensable companion for anybody travelling to the Caribbean - or dreaming of doing so

[This] grand book is so startling in form and vision that it amounts to something new - a constant surprise. While Jelly-Schapiro combines reportage, literary analysis, and history to superb effect, he is not limited by genre; indeed, this important book filled with many truths defines and gives new meaning to that lovely phrase, sui generis -

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.1.2017
• Verlagsort: Edinburgh
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Schlagworte: a brief history of seven killings • Caribbean Islands • Caribbeans • Cultural History • Dave Eggers • Gaiutra Bahadur • henrietta lacks • Hilton Als • Historical research • history book • island people • Islands • Joshua Jelly-Schapiro • Mark Danner • Marlon James • Maximum City • Migration • Nonstop Metropolis • Racial repression • rebecca solnit • Return of a King • Rory Stewart • Slavery • Suketu Mehta • The Caribbean and the World • The Places in Between • Tourism • Travel book • Travel writing • Twelve years a slave • what the butler saw • William Dalrymple
• ISBN-13: 9781782115601 / 9781782115601