Collective Winner of the 2019 Highland Book Prize
Under the ravishing light of an Alaskan sky, objects are spilling from the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village to its hunter-gatherer past. In the shifting sand dunes of a Scottish shoreline, impressively preserved hearths and homes of Neolithic farmers are uncovered. In a grandmother's disordered mind, memories surface of a long-ago mining accident and a 'mither who was kind'.
For this luminous new essay collection, acclaimed author Kathleen Jamie visits archaeological sites and mines her own memories - of her grandparents, of youthful travels - to explore what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. As always she looks to the natural world for her markers and guides. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies, and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered
sense of herself.
Surfacing offers a profound sense of time passing and an antidote to all that is instant, ephemeral, unrooted.
- ISBN10 1908745827
- ISBN13 9781908745828
- Publish Date 1 July 2020 (first published 5 September 2019)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Sort of Books
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 240
- Language English