Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda
by Michael Hingston
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On his fifteenth birthday, in the summer of 1880, future science-fiction writer M.P. Shiel sailed with his father and the local bishop from their home in the Caribbean out to the nearby island of Redonda--where, with pomp and circumstance, he was declared the island's king. A few years later, when Shiel set sail for a new life in London, his father gave him some advice: Try not to be strange. It was almost as if the elder Shiel knew what was coming. Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History show more of the Kingdom of Redonda tells, for the first time, the complete history of Redonda's transformation from an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. With a cast of characters including forgotten sci-fi novelists, alcoholic poets, vegetarian publishers, Nobel Prize frontrunners, and the bartenders who kept them all lubricated while angling for the throne themselves, Michael Hingston details the friendships, feuds, and fantasies that fueled the creation of one of the oddest and most enduring micronations ever dreamt into being. Part literary history, part travelogue, part quest narrative, this cautionary tale about what happens when bibliomania escapes the shelves and stacks is as charming as it is peculiar--and blurs the line between reality and fantasy so thoroughly that it may never be entirely restored. show lessTags
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A story that begins with an early-20th-c. pulp-horror writer and a drunken poet should be more engaging. Turns out that, after all of Hingston’s indefatigable fact-searching, Redonda is more interesting as a woozy myth.
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19+ Works 170 Members
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Literature Studies and Criticism, History, Biography & Memoir, Travel, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 972.974 — History & geography History of North America Mexico, Central America, West Indies, Bermuda West Indies (Antilles) and Bermuda; Caribbean Leeward islands Antigua and Barbuda
- LCC
- F2035 .H56 — Local History of the United States, Canada and Latin America Latin America. Spanish America Lesser Antilles Individual islands
- BISAC
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- Reviews
- 1
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- (4.17)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
