A dispatch from a foreign land, when crafted by an attentive and
skilled writer, can be magical, transmitting pleasure, drama, and
seductive strangeness. In The Moon, Come to Earth, Philip Graham
offers an expanded edition of a popular series of dispatches
originally published on McSweeney’s, an exuberant yet introspective
account of a year’s sojourn in Lisbon with his wife and daughter.
Casting his attentive gaze on scenes as broad as a citywide arts
festival and as small as a single paving stone in a cobbled walk,
Graham renders Lisbon from a perspective that varies between wide-eyed
and knowing; though he’s unquestionably not a tourist, at the same
time he knows he will never be a local. So his lyrical accounts reveal
his struggles with (and love of) the Portuguese language, an awkward
meeting with Nobel laureate José Saramago, being trapped in a budding
soccer riot, and his daughter’s challenging transition to
adolescence while attending a Portuguese school—but he also waxes
loving about Portugal’s saudade-drenched music, its inventive
cuisine, and its vibrant literary culture. And through his humorous,
self-deprecating, and wistful explorations, we come to know Graham
himself, and his wife and daughter, so that when an unexpected crisis
hits his family, we can’t help but ache alongside them. A
thoughtful, finely wrought celebration of the moment-to-moment
excitement of diving deep into another culture and confronting one’s
secret selves, The Moon, Come to Earth is literary travel writing of a
rare intimacy and immediacy.
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226305165
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter