Extract: Found in Translation

Our Book of the Month for December is Found in Translation: The Unexpected Origins of Place Names by Duncan Madden.  This book unravels the tangled threads of history and etymology to uncover the strange, intriguing and enlightening stories that have shaped the names of countries and places around the world.

In this extract we look at the etymology behind ‘Argentina’:

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The Challenger Expedition: Exploring the Ocean’s Depths by Dr Erika Jones

This article is an edited introduction from The Challenger Expedition: Exploring the Ocean’s Depths by Dr Erika Jones, Curator of Navigation at Royal Museums Greenwich.

The book was published to mark the 150th anniversary of the expedition’s launch.

On the 21 December 1872, HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England, to begin a global voyage of deep-sea exploration. A landmark endeavour, the findings and the legacy shaped the development of ocean science as we know it and are still influential in our understanding of the planet today.

With technological and scientific developments of the time, supported by extensive international cooperation and a team of research and naval officers, the expedition was part of the concerted nineteenth-century drive to map the ocean floors and search for life in the abyss.

When the ship returned to Britain in 1876, the scientific team on board had amassed the then largest collection of examples of life from the deep sea. Over the next two decades, a global network of researchers prepared the results for publication culminating in a series of works that is considered the intellectual foundation of modern oceanography.

HMS Challenger under sail passing ice bergs during the oceanographic expedition’s visit to Antarctica, attributed to William Frederick Mitchell, 1880
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
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Extract: Exploring The World by Alexander Maitland

Filled with epic tales of endurance and perseverance, Exploring The World: Two Centuries Of Remarkable Adventurers And Their Journeys by Alexander Maitland celebrates a group of exceptional individuals possessed of indomitable courage, boundless determination and adventurous spirit. It portrays a variety of fascinating lives driven by curiosity, wanderlust and the pursuit of knowledge – and, in doing so, provides a unique overview of two centuries of exploration. Here is an extract about one of the most well-known explorers, Sir Douglas Mawson.

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Extract: Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home by Edward Dusinberre

Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács Quartet, writes about playing Benjamin Britten’s last string quartet, a way to bridge distance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This excerpt is adapted from  Dusinberre’s Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home, published by Faber.

Tuning our instruments backstage, we miss the sounds of enthusiastic chatter before our concert in Grusin Music Hall on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus. Our feet clatter over the wooden floor before we bow to the livestream camera. I imagine our friends listening over loudspeakers in their living rooms and my parents who will watch our performance the next day in Cambridge, in the same part of the world that Benjamin Britten’s  String Quartet no. 3, Opus 94 was largely composed. The menthol drop I slip into my mouth underneath my mask adds an extra sting to the hot breath that fogs my glasses. When we start to play, the facial clues that we usually rely on to communicate changes of character are hidden. From the sparkle in violist Richard O’Neill’s eyes I can imagine his smile. Our cellist, András Féjer sometimes raises his eyebrows sceptically against the dubious rhythmic instincts of a first violinist – now they seem manically animated. 

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Extract: My Family and Other Enemies

My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born. In recounting her own family’s tumultuous history, Novakovich opens up a world that is little known outside the Balkans, telling the stories of people whose experiences weren’t widely reported at the time, when the devastation in Croatia was superseded by the Bosnian conflict and media attention moved elsewhere.

Here is an extract:

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Extract: Free to Go: Across the World on a Motorbike by Esa Aldegheri

When Esa Aldegheri and her husband left their home in Orkney, Esa didn’t know that their eighteen-month motorbike adventure would take them through twenty international frontiers – between Europe and the Middle East, through Pakistan, China and India – many of which are now impassable.

Charting a story of shrinking and expanding liberties and horizons, of motherhood, womanhood, xenophobia and changing geopolitical situations, Free to Go examines the challenges of navigating a world where many assume that women ride pillion, both on a motorbike and within relationships. Part around-the-world adventure, part-literary exploration of womanhood, Free to Go is about the journeys that shape and transform us.

Here is an extract from Free to Go: Across the World on a Motorbike by Esa Aldegheri:

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Extract: Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood to the Arctic by Hugh Brody

Renowned anthropologist and film-maker Hugh Brody weaves a dazzling tapestry of personal memory and distant landscapes: childhood in the Derbyshire hills in the shadow of the Second World War, a kibbutz in Israel and, eventually, the Canadian Arctic.

Conflicted and bewildered by the silence created by his concealed family history, he sought places to which he could escape. Yet everywhere he discovered deep and troubling silences, until he reached the High Arctic, a world far removed from anything he had known. It became a chance to learn, all over again, what it can mean to be alive – yet, even here, he encountered voices that had been silenced by the forces of colonialism.

In defiance of silence, Hugh Brody discovers, through memory and the land, a profound humanity – as well as hope.

Here is an extract from Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood to the Arctic by Hugh Brody:

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Extract: Atlas of Vanishing Places by Travis Elborough

To celebrate the paperback launch of the 2020 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award winning Atlas of Vanishing Places by Travis Elborough, here is an extract for you all to read:

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Rice and peas recipe from ‘West Winds’ by Riaz Phillips

In West Winds: Recipes, History and Tales from Jamaica , award-winning food writer Riaz Phillips tells countless tales of Jamaica through its dishes, drawing on his memories of growing up in the Caribbean diaspora of London and time living in Jamaica.

With a mix of location and recipe photography by Phillips, West Winds fully immerses readers in the spirit and food of Jamaica. From the “waste not, want not” approach instilled in Riaz by his grandmother, to the Ital food he was introduced to living with the Rastafari community, working at eco-farms as well as reconnecting to his grandfather’s birthplace of downtown Kingston, the 100 plus mouthwatering meals, hearty soups, bakes, and refreshing drinks cover all the different elements of Jamaican cooking.

Recipes rooted in centuries of culture through folktales and anecdotes make West Winds so much more than a cookbook – it is an ode to Jamaica and the diasporas, the people and their heritage, with something for everyone. Here is an extract:

Rice and peas recipe from West Winds: Recipes, History and Tales from Jamaica by Riaz Phillips. Published by DK £25 

Rice & Peas image credit: Riaz Phillips
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An extract from Nomads by Anthony Sattin

Nomads by Anthony Sattin tells the ground-breaking story of Nomadic peoples on the move across history.

Humans have been on the move for most of history. Even after the great urban advancement lured people into the great cities of Uruk, Babylon, Rome and Chang’an, most of us continued to live lightly on the move and outside the pages of history. But recent discoveries have revealed another story . . .

Reconnecting with our deepest mythology, our unrecorded antiquity and our natural environment, Nomads is the untold history of civilisation, told through its outsiders.

Here is an extract from Nomads by Anthony Sattin

A young man walks towards me with a stick slung across his shoulders and a flock at his feet. The sheep, in front, beside and behind him, are as chaotic as meltwater in the nearby stream and they carry him down the path like a crowd of rowdy children. An older man follows, weatherworn but still strong, a rifle over his left shoulder. He clicks his tongue to encourage them forward. Behind him are two women on donkeys, one older than the other, and I guess they are his wife and daughter. They look strong women, but then it is a tough life beneath the shard peaks of the Zagros Mountains. Other donkeys carry their belongings, bundled inside heavy rust-and-brown cloth that the women have woven and will soon repurpose as door- flaps when the tents are set up.

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