Paul Theroux invites us to join him on one of his most exotic and tantalizing adventures exploring the coasts and blue lagoons of the Pacific Islands, and taking up residence to discover the secrets of these isles. Theroux is a mesmerizing narrator – brilliant, witty, keenly perceptive as he floats through Gauguin landscapes, sails in the wake of Captain Cook and recalls the bewitching tales of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson. Alone in his kayak, paddling to seldom visited shores, he glides through time and space, discovering a world of islands, their remarkable people, and in turn, happiness. ‘A sharp, fascinating and highly entertaining book ... Theroux at his best’ Daily Telegraph.
The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly). In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines. Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and investigates a cargo cult in Vanuatu. From Australia to Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island, and beyond, this exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.
Foxmask is the second book of a fantasy duet from Juliet Marillier, weaving history and folklore into a saga of adventure, romance, and magic. The Norseman Eyvind, a fierce and loyal Wolfskin, came to a new land on top of the world to find his destiny. With his priestess bride Nessa he saved the land and weathered the treachery that was caused by Eyvind's blood-sworn friend Somerled. After much pain and sorrow the two lovers have managed to create a society where the Norse warriors and the gentle folks of the Orkney Isles live and thrive in contentment at last. A decade and more has passed since the devastating events of the creation of the settlement and Eyvind and Nessa have watched their children grow and thrive in peace. But not all on the islands are content or at peace. Thorvald, the young son of Margaret, widow of the slain king and Eyvind's war leader, has always felt apart and at odds with all he knows. He learns upon his coming to manhood that he is not his father's son but that of the love that Margaret bore for the hated Somerled and that Somerled was not killed for his treachery but sent on a boat, adrift with little more than a knife and skein of water, doomed to the god's will. Thorvald is determined to find a boat and cast off to the West in a desperate bid to find a father he never knew...and to find out if he is made of the same stuff as the heinous traitor. The tragedy of this scheme would be horrific enough...if it were not for the fact that Creidhe, the winsome daughter of Eyvind and Nessa has loved Thorvald since birth and unbeknownst to him conspires to go along on this most perilous of quests. What happens to them on their journey of discovery will ultimately change the lives of all they know and love...and will doom (or redeem) an entire people. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Descriptions of Mer, Yorke, Naghir and Mabuiag Islands; community life; island government; housing; contact history; police, law and order; Torres Strait Infantry; missionaries - London Missionary Society - Papuan Institute; music and dance; role of schools; language - use of English; pearling and mother-of-pearl; beche-de -mer (trepang) and turtle hunting; shell working; catching fish, fish traps, housing, food, recreation, form of government, music, dancing, type of instrument, clothing, education, folklore; Yorke; Housing, handcrafts, interpolation of musical notes explained, clothing, diet, fishing, recreations, trochus fishing, tortoiseshell products, employment, inability to buy liquor; Feast day celebrations described; Darnley; South Sea dance, guitars, hula dancing; Stephens; Adult population 19, general way of life; Moa; Church rule; Thursday; Outline of 1936 strike, weighing in of trochus & pearl shell for despatch; Naghir; Recreations, handcrafts, education, food, housing, sailing, western & native songs; Mabuiag; Housing, mild magic, demography, education, government, dancing & customs, womens dance, drums; stories of Kultut, Tagai, Iruam and Naga; sexual mores; Appendix contains instructions for dance, words of song with Eng. trans. 5 bars music, schoolchildrens dance song on Mabuiag, mens dance on Mabuiag, 5 bars music Eng. trans. & dance instructions; Flying a kite from Naghir, 4 bars music, Eng. words, Steamer lights dance song Coconut Is. 3 bars music Eng. trans. & Kesiria 2 bars music Eng. trans., Murray dance song Eng. trans. Childrens 5 line nonsense rhyme Mabuiag.
This is Radio Happy Isles... Ko e ui ‘e ni ‘a e ‘otu felenite... This is Radio Sunshine... Traveling throughout the Pacific over a period of six years, Robert Seward listened to radio wherever he went. From the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu to Fiji to Tonga to Hawai'i, he tuned in and listened. He recorded broadcasts, he sat in radio stations and newsrooms, he met the people who ran them, and he talked to folks who listened. The result is Radio Happy Isles, a highly readable, insightful, and unexpected look at the mediascape of the Pacific. What Seward discovered is surprising: in an era of satellite downloads and globe-circling communication empires, radio-the forgotten medium-is alive and well in the Pacific. Subject to political pressures and calls for privatization, its role is in constant evolution. But one thing is clear: the media rules of metropolitan dominance have not played out according to script here. Media in the Pacific has been active, not passive, in shaping its own local narratives. Full of anecdotes and engagingly written, Radio Happy Isles introduces us to an unmistakable voice, one that is varied and distinct and far from being drowned out by the noises coming from the metropolitan world.
By examining the often marginal figure of the pirate (and also the hard-to-distinguish privateer), The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630 shows how flexibly these figures served to comment on English nationalism, international relations, and contemporary politics. The first book-length treatment of the cultural impact of Renaissance piracy, this study underlines how despite its transgressive nature, piracy can be seen as a key mechanism which served to connect peoples and regions.
