Aug 29, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
I am wary of the dangers of fetishizing dialect and archaism – all that mollocking and sukebinding Stella Gibbons spoofed so brilliantly in Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Wary, too, of being seen to advocate a tyranny of the nominal – a taxonomic need to point and name,...
Jun 6, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
In a stretch of comparative quiet, by a shore of white sand, a bird I recognized at once was wading carefully in the shallows: rook-size, it was brown all over, but its head was remarkable: a big broad bill balanced by a triangle of crest projecting from the back gave...
Mar 28, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
Although I knew Gaelic to be richly responsive to the sites in which it was spoken, it was my guess that other tongues in these islands also possessed wealths of words for features of place – words that together constituted a vast vanished, or vanishing, language for...
Mar 14, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
He squatted down, arranging the fire, shouting back over his shoulder into the hut, ‘My grandfather was the greatest sorcerer in Dongou, Uncle. Everybody knows. They all know the story. The Chief of Dongou, now, he also was powerful in the spirit way, and in the...
Feb 8, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
Just after four in the morning, Nze stuck his head through the tent-flap. ‘Psst!’ he said. ‘Dr Lary! Let me in!’ Lary, coughing his odd, dry, rapid little cough, switched on his torch and undid the ties. ‘I’m dying!’ said Nze,...
Jan 11, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel |
In her hut in Poto-Poto, the poor quarter of Brazzaville, the feticheuse, smiling at us, knelt on the floor, drew out a handful of cowrie shells from the cloth bag at her waist, and cast them across the raffia mat. Lary Shaffer and I, despite ourselves, leaned forward...