Edward Wilson-Lee, PhD's Books

Shakespeare in Swahililand

In Search of a Global Poet

By: Edward Wilson-Lee, PhD

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Shakespeare in Swahililand

In Search of a Global Poet

By: Edward Wilson-Lee, PhD

An exploration of Shakespeare as a global poet Shakespeare in Swahililand tells the unexpected literary history of Shakespeare’s influence in East Africa. Beginning with Victorian-era expeditions in which Shakespeare’s works were the sole reading material carried into the interior, the Bard has been a vital touchstone throughout the region. His plays were printed by liberated slaves as one of the first texts in Swahili, performed by Indian laborers while they built the Uganda railroad, used to argue for native rights, and translated by intellectuals, revolutionaries, and independence leaders. Weaving together stories of explorers staggering through Africa’s interior, eccentrics living out their dreams on the savanna, decadent émigrés, Cold War intrigues, and even Che Guevara, Edward Wilson-Lee—a Cambridge lecturer raised in Kenya—tallies Shakespeare’s influence in Zanzibar, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Traveling through these countries, he speaks with everyone from theater directors and academics to soldiers and aid workers, discovering not only cultural dimensions traceable to Shakespeare's plays but also an overwhelming insistence that these works provide a key insight into the region. An astonishing work of empathy and historical vision, Shakespeare in Swahililand gets at the heart of what makes Shakespeare so universal and the role that his writings have played in thinking about what it means to be human.

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Page Count

305

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published Date

ISBN 10

0374714444

ISBN 13

9780374714444

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library

By: Edward Wilson-Lee

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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library

By: Edward Wilson-Lee

“Like a Renaissance wonder cabinet, full of surprises and opening up into a lost world.” —Stephen Greenblatt “A captivating adventure…For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page…Magnificent.” —The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of the Year by: * Financial Times * New Statesman * History Today * The Spectator * The impeccably researched and vividly rendered account of the quest by Christopher Columbus’s illegitimate son to create the greatest library in the world—“a perfectly pitched poetic drama” (Financial Times) and an amazing tour through sixteenth-century Europe. In this innovative work of history, Edward Wilson-Lee tells the extraordinary story of Hernando Colón, a singular visionary of the printing press-age who also happened to be Christopher Columbus’s illegitimate son. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando traveled with Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, the eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues, the first ever search engine for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando restlessly and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed as ephemeral trash: song sheets, erotica, newsletters, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522—documented in his poignant Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books—set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. Edward Wilson-Lee’s account of Hernando’s life is a testimony to the beautiful madness of booklovers, a plunge into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own attempts to bring order to the world today.

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Page Count

416

Publisher

Scribner

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982111399

ISBN 13

9781982111397

Shakespeare in Swahililand

In Search of a Global Poet

By: Edward Wilson-Lee, PhD

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Shakespeare in Swahililand

In Search of a Global Poet

By: Edward Wilson-Lee, PhD

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

305

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published Date

ISBN 10

0374714444

ISBN 13

9780374714444

Book's by Edward Wilson-Lee, PhD

Shakespeare in Swahililand

Shakespeare in Swahililand

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Shakespeare in Swahililand

Shakespeare in Swahililand

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