World of Wonders (eBook)

In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments

Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
ProFile (Verlag)
978-1-78283-891-3 (ISBN)

Rezensionen

Within two pages, nature writing feels different and fresh and new. Nezhukumatathil has written a timely story about love, identity and belonging ... We are losing the language and the ability to see and understand the wondrous things around us. And our lives are impoverished by this process ... This book demands we find the eyes to see and the heart to love such things once more. It is a very fine book indeed, truly full of wonder.

Nezhukumatathil's investigations, enhanced by Nakamura's vividly rendered full-color illustrations, range across the world, from a rapturous rendering of monsoon season in her father's native India to her formative years in Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona, where she learned from the native flora and fauna that it was common to be different ... The writing dazzles with the marvel of being fully alive.

In thirty bewitching essays, Nezhukumatathil spotlights natural astonishments raining from monsoon season in India to clusters of fireflies in western New York, each one a microcosm of joy and amazement. With her ecstatic prose and her rapturous powers of insight, Nezhukumatathil proves herself a worthy spiritual successor to the likes of Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard, setting the bar high for a new generation of nature writers.

Should the wonderful David Attenborough ever retire, my hope is someone at BBC has read the work of Aimee Nezhukumatathil ... What a lovely book this is, gentle in its pacing, well-illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, and quietly subversive in the way she channels its gusts of joy.

A restless search for identity and belonging finds a warm welcome in nature's details. Nezhukumatathil's writing is like coming home.

These are the praise songs of a poet working brilliantly in prose. Each essay compresses a great deal of art and truth into a small space, whether about fireflies or flamingos, monkeys or monsoons, childhood or motherhood, or the trials and triumphs of living with brown skin in a dominant white world. You will not find a more elegant, exuberant braiding of natural and personal history.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil gives us the world in technicolour. Astonishing nature burgeons all around her as she shows what it means to find wonder in a wilfully dull world

Nezhukumatathil applies her skill as a poet to a scintillating series of short essays on nature. She takes up topics that fascinate her - the bizarre-looking potoo birds of Central and South America; corpse flowers, with their rich colors and acrid odor - and connects them to her own experience of the world ... Throughout, she vividly describes sounds, smells, and color - the myriad hues of a 'sea of saris' from India - and folds in touches of poetry. Fumi Nakamura's lush illustrations add to the book's appeal. Readers of Terry Tempest Williams and Annie Dillard will appreciate Nezhukumatathil's lyrical look at nature.

An unusual and beguiling blend of cultural memoir and Nature writing ... [Nezhukumatathil's] irrepressible spirit and zest for life shine throughout

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.9.2021
• Illustrationen: Fumi Mini Nakamura
• Zusatzinfo: Black & white illustrations throughout
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: anita sethi i belong here • best nature writing • Blue Planet • cal flyn islands of abandonment • chris Packham back to nature • David Attenborough • gifts of gravity and light • helen macdonald vesper flights • H is for Hawk • in the garden essays on nature and growing • james rebanks English pastoral • jini reddy wanderland • Katherine may wintering • katherine rundell the golden mole • Kathleen Jamie • Kathryn aalto writing wild • losing eden lucy jones • mary oliver • Nan Shepherd Prize • Nick Hayes • Penelope Lively • Planet earth • Robert Macfarlane • samantha walton everybody needs beauty • the salt path raynor winn • the wild remedy emma Mitchell • Wainwright Prize
• ISBN-10: 1-78283-891-0 / 1782838910
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78283-891-3 / 9781782838913