The Islands and the Sea: Five Centuries of Nature Writing from the Caribbean - Hardcover

9780195066777: The Islands and the Sea: Five Centuries of Nature Writing from the Caribbean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195066774 ISBN 13: 9780195066777

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1991

"Everyone has to learn to see the West Indies tropics for himself," wrote V.S. Naipaul in The Middle Passage. "The landscape has never been recorded...the depth of sky, the brilliancy of light, the insubstantiality of colour in the tropics. The more gifted painters have ceased to record the landscape: the patterns of the leaves are too beguiling." The Islands and the Sea includes dozens of writers--poets and novelists, naturalists and explorers--who, like Naipaul help us to see the beguiling Caribbean through their eyes.
Editor John Murray opens this anthology, the first of its kind, with an informed essay that provides a perspective on the region in history and literature. Murray then presents writers ranging from Daniel Defoe to Barry Lopez, from Charles Darwin to Edward O. Wilson. In these selections, one can step ashore with Columbus on San Salvador Island in 1492, travel up the forbidding Orinoco River with Sir Walter Raleigh, and explore ancient Mayan ruins along the coast with swashbuckling John Stephens in 1843. Ernest Hemingway, writing to Maxwell Perkins from Key West, Florida, describes the aftermath of the famous Matecumbe hurricane: "Indian Key absolutely swept clean, not a blade of grass, and over the high center of it were scattered live conchs that came in with the sea, craw fish, and dead morays. The whole bottom of the sea blew over it." Other contemporary writers include Barry Lopez, Derek Walcott, Rachel Carson, Jamaica Kincaid, and Roger Caras. With each selection Murray includes an informative introduction.
A Republic of Rivers, John Murray's anthology of nature writing on Alaska and the Yukon, was hailed for its judicious selections, deft editing, and, most importantly, its ability to capture and communicate a sense of place. In The Islands and the Sea, he once again gathers an enthralling collection of writings that convey the beauty Caribbean's luminous waters, its rich, green hillsides, teeming reefs, and remarkable varied people.

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About the Author:

About the Editor:
John A. Murray is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and is the editor of A Republic of Rivers: Three Centuries of Nature Writing from Alaska and the Yukon.

From Library Journal:

This diverse (48 writers) and catholic (Christopher Columbus to Ernest Hemingway) anthology is a bit of a tease. The best work, such as that of the great 18th-century naturalists like William Bartram, is marvelous but often over too quickly; some of the selections are barely a page. Still, there is much good work here: the Caribbean Basin is a rich repository of good writing, and this book can lead readers to primary texts they might otherwise never encounter. The contemporary selections (Jamaica Kincaid, Barry Lopez, Edward O. Wilson) are more overtly sociological, and therefore political, in keeping with a trend toward melding science with politics that Murray points out on several occasions. A good addition for collections of contemporary regional issues of the Caribbean and the American Southeast, and an excellent choice for smaller, more general collections everywhere.
- Mark L. Shelton, Athens, Ohio
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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