A History of Silence - Softcover

Jones, Lloyd

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1922147338 ISBN 13: 9781922147332

Publisher: Text Pub Co, 2014

Synopsis

"A daring writer who can be relied on to ignore expectation, and is becoming one of the most interesting, honest and thought-provoking novelists working today."--The Guardian

"Jones' rejection of isolationism and imaginative embrace of so much that the world has to offer make him a literary figure to watch."--Los Angeles Times

"A knockout... a fresh and immaculately paced study of the process by which old information becomes new, and one of the bravest and best-written memoirs I have read." -The Telegraph

A powerful and unexpected memoir from the author of the best-selling Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Mister Pip.

As the New Zealand city of Christchurch lies in ruins after the catastrophic earthquake of February 2011, Lloyd Jones begins a search for his past, a search that takes him through childhood memories of puzzling events to Pembroke Dock in Wales, and finally to the discovery of a devastating court transcript.

On this extraordinary journey, he pieces together the fragments of a story that has been buried in his family for a lifetime. A mother who gave up her daughter, a naval captain drowned at sea, a marriage to save a child.

And a truth that changes everything.

Lloyd Jones was born in New Zealand in 1955. His best-known novel is the international bestseller Mister Pip, which won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the 2008 Kiriyama Prize Fiction Category, the 2008 Montana Award for Readers Choice, the Montana Fiction Award, and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been made into a major feature film starring Hugh Laurie (House). Lloyd Jones lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

About this title

Product Description:

Stone by stone the basilica was being dismantled in order to be put back together again. Each stone was painted with a number and laid with care onto pallets spread over the ground...I kept thinking about those numbered stones. Some purpose began to take shape. I began to wonder if I might re-trace and recover something of my own past, to reassemble it in the manner of the basilica. It was a matter of looking to see if any of the original building blocks remained, and where I might find them. A History of Silence is a book about a country and a broken landscape. It's about the devastation in Christchurch, after the 2011 earthquake. It's about how easily we erase stories we find inconvenient. It's about the fault lines which that cataclysmic event opened up in Lloyd Jones' understanding of his own family history. In A History of Silence Jones embarks on a quest for the truth about his family. What happened? Why do there seem to be so few stories? Why are there so few mementos? The answers he finds are completely unexpected and change everything.

Review:

'Jones is a daring writer who can be relied on to ignore expectation, and is becoming one of the most interesting, honest and thought-provoking novelists working today.'
Guardian

'Lloyd Jones is a master storyteller.'
Weekend Australian

'It would be difficult to think of another novelist as original or fearless as...Lloyd Jones.'
Monthly

'Poetically observed detail and an affecting evocation of the past will reward readers interested in the way our history (even, or especially, that which we don't know about) can shape us.'
Bookseller and Publisher

About this edition

• Publisher: Text Pub Co
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1922147338
• ISBN 13: 9781922147332
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 273