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6+ opere 802 membri 39 recensioni 1 preferito

Sull'Autore

Comprende il nome: John Gimlette

Opere di John Gimlette

Opere correlate

Oxtravels: Meetings with Remarkable Travel Writers (2011) — Collaboratore — 57 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Data di nascita
1963
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
UK
Luogo di residenza
London, England, UK
Istruzione
Cambridge University (Law)
Attività lavorative
Barrister
Premi e riconoscimenti
Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize (1997)

Utenti

Recensioni

enjoyable but a bit heavy on the military and political history for me.
I preferred the occasional glimpses of wildlife or stories about eccentrics
 
Segnalato
cspiwak | 15 altre recensioni | Mar 6, 2024 |
Extremely thorough and well-written. Such much darkness and death on this little island. Tourists don't seem to have a clue that they are looking at a fairly recent battlefield and mass gravesite. Wow. I gave it three stars because it was relentless in its horrors and I couldn't stomach some of it. I needed more breaks in the text, I guess.
 
Segnalato
RachelGMB | 7 altre recensioni | Dec 27, 2023 |
Being an Australian my interactions with Sri Lanka have been through cricket, Sinhalese university friends, hearing about the Civil War and what Arthur C. Clarke may have been doing with young boys. Thanks to Elephant Complex, I now know far, far more about the country, its history and its customs and far, far more than I really needed to know about one of the most vicious cil wars imaginable and what many western men were doing with young boys.

Gimlette can write lyrically and evocatively and I often stopped reading to admire a turn of phrase. His connections to the great and the good of Sri Lankan society gave him access to many places barred to the hoi polloi so we get guided tours of Civil War era torture chambers and the like. In all, a fascinating, if not deeply unsettling read, even if Gimlette's distaste of cricket was baffling.… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
MiaCulpa | 7 altre recensioni | Sep 30, 2022 |
56/2021. At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig by John Gimlette is a travel and history book focussing on Paraguay in South America. I found the author an unlikeable character and his often crude attempts to explain the, frankly, inexplicable history and society of Paraguay are an uphill struggle, although presumably less for the reader than the writer. Gimlette's not especially observant and his writing style is basic journalistic but one does feel he was trying his best. Of the 355 pages the first 115 are exclusively set within the capital city Asuncion and only feature interactions inside the mainstream urban middle to upper class, with not so much as a taxi driver, bartender, or retailer for variety. Gimlette does later attempt to wander further afield but appears handicapped by his limited Spanish and non-existent Guarani or Plattdeutsch.

There are all the atrocities one might expect: massacres of indigenous people; destruction of the environment (although as the environment includes horrors such as piranha fish one can sympathise to some extent); endless torturing and mass murdering dictators from 16th century Conquistadors onwards into the 20th century; pointless wars leaving up to 66% of the general population and 90% of the male population dead; long term extreme poverty and lack of healthcare. There are also less predictable outrages: the Jesuits who claimed for 160 years that they were protecting and educating indigenous people but who were responsible for many thousands of deaths while failing to produce even one indigenous Catholic priest; or the pacifist Mennonites resorting to fistfights with nazis on the streets of Mennonite colonies (readers will be heartened to know that even the avowedly right-wing Paraguayan army sided with the Mennonites and made the nazis leave for their own colony).

There's a single page map at the beginning, a double page chronology at the end, and a surprising four page Further Reading with fourteen sections that handily sum up the history of what European and US influences have inflicted on Paraguay without much addressing the cultures and people who were already there: Jesuits; Dr Francia; The War of the Triple Alliance; Eliza Lynch; The Mennonites; Utopians, Immigrants and Colonists; Chaco War; The Stroessner Years; Nazis; Natural History (three books all written by Englishmen before 1959); Travel and Exploration (only three books written after 1945, with the most recent from 1972); Paraguayan Literature (two books by Augusto Roa Bastos); English Literature (five books, with Graham Greene's two being the latest); General (only two specifically about Paraguay although they're both 1997 so that's something).

Quote

After the trains stopped: "The railway carried on. It carried on swallowing up eleven billion guaranis a year. Not a ticket was sold nor an ounce of freight moved. Once, these magnificent trains had rumbled all the way across the country and connected with others for Buenos Aires, for Brazil and the sea. They'd carried fruit and soldiers, girlfriends, sugar cane, Australian socialists to their Utopias and Polish peasants as far from feudalism as they could get. Then, line by line, the system had been overwhelmed by weeds and its sleepers pillaged for cooking. In the last few years it had run a wheezy service to the suburbs, but now even those trains had stopped. // But the railway carried on. It carried on employing nine hundred railway staff. Some, perhaps ten per cent, were fantasmas – ghosts – and were purely imaginary, the Mickey Mouses and Donald Ducks. Those that were real were often just planilleros or ticket-boys; moonlighting between their railway jobs and other distractions."
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
spiralsheep | 15 altre recensioni | Apr 12, 2021 |

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Statistiche

Opere
6
Opere correlate
1
Utenti
802
Popolarità
#31,798
Voto
½ 3.7
Recensioni
39
ISBN
44
Lingue
3
Preferito da
1

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