Author:Julia Blackburn
Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize
Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village and they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had been trapped in an archaic feudal system and owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had, of the eruption of the Second World War, of the conflict between the fascists and the partisans, of death and fear and hunger of how they hid like like foxes in the mountains. 'Write it down for us,' they said, 'because otherwise it will all be lost.'
Thin Paths is a celebration of the songlines of one place that could be many places and a celebration of the humour and determination of the human spirit.
My book of the year. Beautiful, beguiling, memorable
—— Edmund de WaalImpossible to forget...beautiful and deeply humane
—— Sunday TimesProfoundly moving...absorbing...and compassionate... Blackburn writes beautifully and despite its sorrows, Thin Paths is full of humour and pulsating life
—— ScotsmanMarvellous... Her writing is as eloquent and elegant as ever
—— Literary ReviewA lyrical patchwork of fine-grained nature writing
—— IndependentReading Julia Blackburn's account of her life in a remote corner of the Ligurian mountains is like lifting a stone to find a strange, intricate, hidden world...prose that is ruthlessly unsentimental, but full of love
—— Maggie Fergusson , Intelligent LifeIn Liguria Blackburn catches the last survivors, some in their nineties, in time to hear echoes of a culture that is already part of the past
—— Lee Langley , SpectatorJulia Blackburn's thoughtful book has a poet's direct lyricism...a vivid, moving account
—— MetroBlackburn brings her special gift for the art of place to this lyrical account of the Italian mountain village where she and her husband settled. Although she writes superbly about landscape and wildlife, it's her neighbours, and their haunting tales, who make the book sing
—— iAbsorbing
—— Daily MailA glorious read!
—— MojomumsHighly readable and illuminating ... Mishra's analysis of Muslim reactions is particularly topical
—— David Goodall , TabletEnormously ambitious but thoroughly readable, this book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today's Asia
—— Amitav Ghosh , Wall Street JournalSophisticated ... not so much polemic as cri de coeur, motivated by Mishra's keen sense of the world, East and West, hurtling towards its own destruction
—— Tehelka, New DelhiOutstanding ... Mishra wears his scholarship lightly and weaves together the many strands of history into a gripping narrative ... The insights afforded by this book are too many to be enumerated ... Mishra performs a signal service to the future - by making us read the past in a fresh light
—— The Hindu, New Delhi[Full of] complexity and nuance
—— Mail TodaySubtle, erudite and entertaining
—— Financial ExpressMishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia
—— Free Press JournalA vital, nuanced argument ... prodigious
—— Mint
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