Ancestry
Autor Simon Maweren Limba Engleză Hardback – 25 oct 2022
Considerăm că trecutul nu este doar o înșiruire de date calendaristice, ci, așa cum sugerează Simon Mawer, o țară străină în care suntem cu toții exilați. În Ancestry, autorul pornește de la „oasele goale” ale registrelor de recensământ pentru a le reda vocea și carnea strămoșilor săi uitați. Ne regăsim în fața unui tablou vast, unde un orfan analfabet de pe o plajă din Suffolk și o croitoreasă de șaptesprezece ani ce călătorește spre Londra devin pilonii unei istorii vii. Suntem de părere că forța acestui roman rezidă în capacitatea de a transforma documentul arid în emoție pură, purtându-ne din mizeria vitală a Londrei dickensiene până la ororile războiului din Crimeea. La intersecția dintre Common People de Alison Light și The Rich Woods de Charles Gill, această operă combină rigoarea detectivistică a genealogiei cu forța narativă a unei saga de familie. Dacă în Common People accentul cade pe istoria muncii și a deplasărilor sociale, Ancestry aduce un plus de lirism și profunzime psihologică, specifică unui romancier de talia lui Mawer. În contextul operei sale, dacă The Girl Who Fell from the Sky sau Tightrope explorau tensiunea spionajului și trauma postbelică, iar Prague Spring surprindea efervescența politică a anului 1968, Ancestry se întoarce către o temă mai intimă, dar la fel de complexă: ereditatea. Este o preocupare ce amintește de Mendel's Dwarf, însă aici determinismul nu este doar genetic, ci istoric și social. Stilul este unul evocativ și sobru, evitând sentimentalismul facil în favoarea unei observații tăioase asupra condiției umane în fața vicisitudinilor sorții.
Preț: 160.67 lei
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 1635423198
Pagini: 432
Dimensiuni: 145 x 211 x 36 mm
Greutate: 0.61 kg
Editura: Other Press (NY)
De ce să citești această carte
Recomandăm Ancestry oricărui cititor pasionat de istorie care dorește să înțeleagă cum viețile oamenilor obișnuiți, fără putere sau influență, au modelat prezentul. Este o lectură despre reziliență și legăturile invizibile de familie, oferind o perspectivă empatică asupra supraviețuirii în secolul al XIX-lea. Câștigați nu doar o poveste captivantă, ci și o reflecție profundă asupra propriei identități prin oglinda trecutului.
Descriere
The past is another country and we are all its exiles. Banished forever, we look back in fascination and wonder at this mysterious land. Who were the people who populated it?
Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea... Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, sits primly in a second class carriage on the train from Sussex to London and imagines a new life in the big city... George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Foot, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms. Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. They lived, loved, felt joy and fear, and ultimately died. But who were they? And what indissoluble thread binds them together?
Simon Mawer's compelling and original novel puts flesh on our ancestors' bones to bring them to life and give them voice. He has created stories that are gripping and heart-breaking, from the squalor and vitality of Dickensian London to the excitement of seafaring in the last days of sail and the horror of the trenches of the Crimea. There is birth and death; there is love, both open and legal but also hidden and illicit. Yet the thread that connects these disparate figures is something that they cannot have known - the unbreakable bond of family.
Recenzii
Moving and exhilarating
Gripping... an intriguing blend of archival research and fictionalised accounts of the life histories of his own forebears... I won't forget these women whose DNA he is so proud of inheriting, or the voices he conjures for them... They were anything but ordinary
Mawer writes movingly about the privations of military life and the hardships endured by women in the Victorian era... His prose is measured and elegant
Told with brio, the gutsy narrative evokes the messiness and fragility of everyday life in the nineteenth century... I was moved by Mawer's defense of storytelling as a vital tool of historical recovery
An astonishing blend of historical fiction and imaginative non-fiction, Ancestry is a book that will stay with me forever... A beautiful, haunting and extremely moving testament to what men and women without means or agency must endure to keep their families together and what we owe - and can learn from them - in turn
The past is another country and we are all its exiles. Banished forever, we look back in fascination and wonder at this mysterious land. Who were the people who populated it?
Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea... Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, sits primly in a second class carriage on the train from Sussex to London and imagines a new life in the big city... George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Foot, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms. Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. They lived, loved, felt joy and fear, and ultimately died. But who were they? And what indissoluble thread binds them together?
Simon Mawer's compelling and original novel puts flesh on our ancestors' bones to bring them to life and give them voice, from the vitality of Dickensian London to the excitement of seafaring in the last days of sail and the horror of the trenches of the Crimea. There is birth and death; there is love, both open and legal but also hidden and illicit. Yet the thread that connects these disparate figures is something that they cannot have known - the unbreakable bond of family.