Grains of Sand - Hardcover

Buckley, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091801362 ISBN 13: 9780091801366

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2000

Synopsis

Publisher: Hutchinson
Date of Publication: 2000
Binding:
Edition: First Edition
Condition: Mint/Mint
Description: 0091801362 `I was sitting in the bath poring over a soggy map, when I saw that the desert is an ocean. Encircling this green planet were bands of golden desert. Having that vision of a navigable route around the world, I felt compelled to make the journey: a circumnavigation by desert...'

About this title

Product Description:

The story of a journey, a circumnavigation of the earth via the belt of deserts which make up a fifth of its landmass. Martin Buckley has travelled both across and into deserts, in order to discover how people live there, to explore the desert's grip on human imagination, and how to probe its impact on the global environment.

From the Publisher:

'Buckley is a born storyteller...read this book' Observer
‘Buckley writes wonderfully well, with a novelist’s ear for dialogue and a con man’s eye for character. The book’s opening scene, set at a tawdry French diplomatic party in Chad, is every bit as accomplished as anything in Graham Greene. Buckley’s desert descriptions resonate long after you put his book down. No grain of sand goes unturned in Buckley’s engaging, almost surgical observations of people and place. He’s as sharp as a cactus spine’ Evening Standard

‘I was sitting in the bath one day, poring over a soggy map, when it hit me: binding this green planet were bands of gold. I saw that you could almost circumnavigate the earth without ever leaving the desert.’ Martin Buckley’s account of a journey through some of the world’s harshest landscapes is harsh, hilarious, yet filled with a sense of the desert’s culture, ecology – and ultimate mystery.

‘Magnificent...His account of a two-year odyssey round the world’s deserts...is brilliantly illuminated...passionate and entertaining’ Scotland on Sunday

‘As with all good travel books, the outer journey is paralleled by that into unknown realms within...Buckley is a born storyteller. He is a powerfully visual writer. Read this book most of all for its prose, which sparkles with inventiveness, its unstinting compassion for the people and places it describes and its author’s anarchic humour. It is the next best thing to crossing the deserts of the world oneself’ Observer

‘There is a zest and maturity to the prose which marks Grains of Sand as a particularly auspicious debut...Buckley has Theroux’s gift for observation’ Herald (Scotland)

‘The further Buckley ventures off the beaten track the better he writes...An epic journey’ Sunday Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0091801362
• ISBN 13: 9780091801366
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 458