Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
by Tim Robinson
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Description
'Stone of Aran: Pilgrimmage' is, as Robert Macfarlane says in his introduction, 'one of the msot sustained, intensive and imaginative studies of a place that has ever been carried out.' That place is one of the most mysterious and oldest inhabited landscapes in the world, the islands of Aran off the west coast of Ireland. Dsolate, storm-lashed limestone rocks, the islands have been meticulously cultivated for four thousand years, divided up into tiny plots of land that were worked with hard, show more unremitting labour. Fishing in the open Atlantic seas provided another, lethally dangerious, living. The people who lived there endured and left records in stone, story and oral tradition. Tim Robinson's epic exploratin of hte islands, which have already haunted generations of Irish writers, takes the form of a clockwise journey around the coast of Aran. Every cliff, inlet and headland reveals layers of myth and historical memory, and Robinson amkes beautifully crafted observations about the habits ofbirds, plants and humans. There are walls, cairns and ancient forts whose meaning and function is still not clear. And there is the relentless weather, and the strange properties of limestone, slowly dissolving in the rain. This is an unforgettable, uncategorisable book. 'The best book ever written by an Englishman about Ireland.' Jonathan Keates, 'Independent.' 'Aran is not just an island to him. It is an ultimate place ... It is a wonderful achievement.' Seamus Deane, 'London Review of Books'. 'Robinson deals with space the way Proust deals with time.' Sean Dunne. show lessTags
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23+ Works 1,001 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
- Original title
- Stones of Aran. Pilgrimage
- Original publication date
- 1986; 2004 (Nederlandse vertaling) (Nederlandse vertaling)
- Important places
- Aran Islands, County Galway, Ireland; Ireland
- Epigraph
- [None]
- Dedication
- Do mo chairde Árannacha
- First words
- Cosmologists now say that Time began ten or fifteen thousand million years ago, and that the horizon of the visible universe is therefore the same number of light-years distant from us.
Timescape with signpost.
The circuit that blesses is clochwise, or, since the belief is thousands of years older than the clock, sunwise.
I. South. Before beginning. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But for a book to stand like an island out of the sea of the unwritten it must acknowledge its own bounds, and turn inward from them, and look into the labyrinth.
- Blurbers*
- Nooteboom, Cees
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Travel, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Science & Nature
- DDC/MDS
- 941.748 — History & geography History of Europe British Isles Connaught Galway
- LCC
- DA990 .A8 .R62 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Great Britain History of Great Britain Ireland Local history and description Northern Ireland (Ulster)
- BISAC
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- 313
- Popularity
- 101,689
- Rating
- (3.69)
- Languages
- Dutch, English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 2
