Foreign Land is a book from From Jonathan Raban, the award–winning author of Bad Land and Passage to Juneau, Foreign Land pdf book is a quirky and insightful story of what can happen when one can and does go home again.
Foreign Land pdf Book Summary
For the past thirty years, George Grey has been a ship bunker in the fictional west African nation of Montedor, but now he’s returning home to England-to a daughter who’s a famous author he barely knows, to a peculiar new friend who back in the sixties was one of England’s more famous singers, and to the long and empty days of retirement during which he’s easy prey to the melancholy of memories, all the more acute since the woman he loves is still back in Africa. Witty, charming and masterly crafted,Foreign Landis an exquisitely moving tale of awkward relationships and quiet redemption.
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Foreign Land Book Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting poignant tale with a fantastic end.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 24, 2000
There are many books that are rivals for the award of best beginning, but this is definitely my vote for the best ever ending of a novel. Obviously I can’t tell you the end, because that would spoil it, but the end of this book has kept me thinking for years since I read it. The story itself is low key, an aging man who has spent his productive years abroad and finds no solace in returning home. He decides to head off into the teeth of a rebellion rather than vegetate in the country of his birth. The novel is well written, with the nautical detail that you would expect from Raban. It is a book written at the pace of the central character, a little slow reflecting his age and the age in which he grew up. Believe me, though, this is one you want to finish, The ending is just brilliant.
2.0 out of 5 stars WOW, WAS THAT DIFFICULT TO FINISH!!!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 25, 2012
This is my 4th RABAN, and, my least favorite, by far.
I really like the way RABAN writes, his command of the
language is excellent and his story-telling is very picturesque.
All that said, I didn’t get this book!!! What was the point???
I wanted to stop quite a few times, but, I finished it.
For only 350 pages—-it read like 700.
4.0 out of 5 stars Welcome Aboard
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 31, 2011
I’ve just read this book for the fourth time and with the same pleasure as the first.
It is the tale of a 60-year-old Englishman, George Grey, who retires to Cornwall after working in the shipping business in West Africa for over 30 years.
Adjusting to a new life means trying to re-establish a relationship with his estranged daughter who is in her mid-30s and cope with a society that has changed so much during his absence that it has become virtually a foreign land.
He also tries to cope with the end of his affair with a local woman back in Africa at the same time as he strikes up a contact with another former expatriate – an Englishwoman in her 50s who used to be a well-known singer and lived in the United States.
It all proves to be too much and the only way he can escape is by abandoning his moral scruples and using a secret bribe he accepted from a corrupt African dictator that allows him to buy his own boat and find the freedom he seeks.
It is a bittersweet story and Raban leaves the reader on the last page to decide whether George will find the heaven he is looking for or end up in a more hellish kind of place.
Much of the book takes place inside George’s head as he has conversations with his long-dead father, an eccentric Church of England clergyman, his war bride ex-wife whom he has not seen for years and other characters from his childhood and period in the navy.
At times it is very funny – George’s bafflement with TV shows and his hopeless dealings with a lecherous television shop owner – and other times poignant as he realizes that he will never to restore any real link with his daughter.
I am surprised that Raban does raise the moral issue of George’s use of the bribe but I am not complaining as this would have gone against the tone of the book.
Raban portrays his characters affectionately and is particularly convincing in writing about the difference between living on land and living on a boat.
About Jonathan Raban Author of Foreign Land pdf Book
Jonathan Raban (born 14 June 1942, Hempton, Norfolk, England) Author of Foreign Land pdf Book is a British travel writer, critic, and novelist. He has received several awards, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Royal Society of Literature’s Heinemann Award, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and a 1997 Washington State Governor’s Writer’s Award. Since 1990 he has lived with his daughter in Seattle. In 2003, his novel Waxwings was long listed for the Man Booker Prize.
Though he is primarily regarded as a travel writer, Raban’s accounts often blend the story of a journey with rich discussion of the history of the water through which he travels and the land around it. Even as he maintains a dispassionate and often unforgiving stance towards the people he meets on his travels, he does not shirk from sharing his own perceived foibles and failings with the reader. Frequently, Raban’s autobiographical accounts of journeys taken mirror transformations in his own life or the world at large: Old Glory takes place during the buildup to Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election, Coasting as the Falklands War begins, and Passage to Juneau as the failure of the author’s marriage becomes apparent. Similarly melancholic and personal themes of turmoil and loss can be detected in his novels.
Foreign Land pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- Publisher : Vintage; 1982nd edition (December 4, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0375725946
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375725944
- Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.18 x 0.78 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #5,958,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #41,678 in Short Stories Anthologies
- #83,560 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #210,065 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews: 3.5 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
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