Winner of the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and the 2019 NSW Premier's History Awards for general history‘Wonderfully researched and beautifully written’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan‘Succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of LongitudeWinner of the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and the 2019 NSW Premier's History Awards for general history‘Wonderfully researched and beautifully written’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan‘Succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of LongitudeFor more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonise these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People is a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world.‘I loved this book. I found Sea People the most intelligent, empathic, engaging, wide-ranging, informative, and authoritative treatment of Polynesian mysteries that I have ever read. Christina Thompson’s gorgeous writing arises from a deep well of research and succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and The Glass Universe‘To those of the western hemisphere, the Pacific represents a vast unknown, almost beyond our imagining; for its Polynesian island peoples, this fluid, shifting place is home. Christina Thompson’s wonderfully researched and beautifully written narrative brings these two stories together, gloriously and excitingly. Filled with teeming grace and terrible power, her book is a vibrant and revealing new account of the watery part of our world’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan‘A compelling story, beautifully told, the best exploration narrative I’ve read in years’ Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb‘Fascinating and satisfying’ Simon Winchester, author of The Map that Changed the World‘Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Polynesia, the Pacific, or the spread of humanity around the globe’ Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World‘Christina Thompson…is perhaps ideally placed to try to answer the question [of Polynesian origins] – and in Sea People, her fascinating and satisfying addition to an already considerable body of Polynesian literature, she succeeds admirably’ New York Times Book Review‘Compelling… These pages will unleash the imagination [and] spark insight’ National Geographic‘Superb. . . . An illuminating read for amateur sleuths and professional scholars alike’ SpectatorChristina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review and the author of Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story, which was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. A dual citizen of the US and Australia, she lives outside of Boston with her family.• PACIFIC HISTORY IS HAVING A MOMENT: the publication of this book follows on from the hit Oceania exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and the BBC4 documentary Oceans Apart: Art and the Pacific with James Fox. Awareness of Pacific history and culture is at an all time high with British audiences, but there are few accessible, entertaining books out there on the subject.• AWARD-WINNING, WELL-CONNECTED AUTHOR: Thompson is the editor of the Harvard Review and teaches in the writing program at Harvard Summer School and Harvard University Extension, where she was awarded the James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Award in 2008. Thompson is originally from Australia and her husband is Maori – a member of the Ngati Rehia hapu of the Nga Puhi tribe of Aotearoa (New Zealand). This book explores the fascinating history of the Polynesians from a unique personal perspective, written by an author with an intimate connection to it.• ESTABLISHED READERSHIP: Thompson’s book is an interdisciplinary epic that begins in prehistory and stretches to our current moment. It also focuses on a wide cast of diverse characters, both Polynesian, European, and American. It will appeal to readers of Dava Sobel’s Longitude (350k TCM), Philip Hoare’s Leviathan (34k TCM), Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea (110k TCM) and David Barrie’s SEXTANT (10k TCM).
Publicat de: HarperCollins Publishers