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Black Apples of Gower

Iain Sinclair author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Little Toller Books

Published:8th Jul '16

Should be back in stock very soon

Black Apples of Gower cover

Iain Sinclair, the celebrated author and psycho-geographer, walks back along the blue-grey roads and cliff-top paths of his childhood in south Wales, rediscovering the Gower peninsula. Provoked by the strange and enigmatic series of paintings Afal du Brogwyr (Black Apple of Gower) made by the artist Ceri Richards in the 1950s, Sinclair leaves behind the familiar "murky elsewheres" of his life in Hackney, London, carrying an envelope of photographs and old postcards, along with fragments of memory. He soon realises that a series of walks over the same ground - Port Enyon Point to Worm's Head have become significant waymarks in his life. His recollections of a meeting with the poet Vernon Watkins, the art of Richards and the poetry of Dylan Thomas lead him to his final quest, the Paviland Cave where in 1823 human remains 36,000 years old were discovered.

"Luxuriant prose, has a dark ascorbic bite, lingering on the tongue just as surely as it does in the mind." Jon Gower, Caught by the River. "Black Apples of Gower fuses anecdote, memoir, biography, history, archaeology and geography in an essay on mortality and memory that sweeps like Rhossili Bay. But is is also a visit to this island of otherness, whose scents, sounds, flora and fauna accompany every step of the way, and there is not a page in which Mr Sinclair's prose is any less musical, rich or sharp than his ghost-guides finest poetry." Mark Griffiths, Country Life.

ISBN: 9781908213457

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 212g

184 pages