Anna Enquist - Böcker

An internationally bestselling, award-winning novel peering deep into the passions, losses, and reveries of the wife of eighteenth-century explorer Captain James Cook.After twelve years of marriage to English explorer James Cook, Elizabeth has yet to spend an entire year with her husband. In their house by the Thames, she moves to the rhythms of her life as a society wife, but there is so much more to her than meets the eye. She has the fortitude to manage the house and garden, raise their children, and face unbearable sorrow by herself—in fact, she is sometimes in thrall to her own independence.As she prepares for another homecoming, Elizabeth looks forward to James’s triumphant return and the work she will undertake reading and editing his voluminous journals. But will the private life she’s been leading in his absence distract her from her role in aid of her husband’s grand ambitions? Can James find the compassion to support her as their family faces unimaginable loss, or must she endure life alone as he sails off toward another adventure?An intimate and sharply observed novel, The Homecoming is as revelatory as James Cook’s exploration of distant frontiers and as richly rewarding as Elizabeth’s love for her family. With courage and strength, through recollection and imagination, author Anna Enquist brilliantly narrates Elizabeth’s compelling record of her life, painting a psychological portrait of an independent woman ahead of her time and closely acquainted with history.

In response to In een ander licht, the Dutch anthology of poems, from Wales comes In a Different Light, a ground-breaking collection of work by fourteen contemporary Dutch poets who have made continental reputations but who wait to be discovered in the English language. And there are fascinating, rewarding discoveries to be made by the English-speaking reader.Here is a poetry surprisingly unmoved by great events (world wars) and politics or by nature (perhaps not so surprisingly from a country engineered to prevent inundation by the sea). Instead for many poets language has become material, like paint for an artist; for the poets in this anthology, at least, the tone is often conversational. Their subjects are the 'big ones': death, doubt, stillness, alienation, minute alterations of perspective. Not surprisingly as residents and products of a small country situated on the delta of a great European river, Dutch poets are concerned with their role as inhabitants of a continent. In many ways the differences between Dutch, Welsh and English poetry could not be more pronounced, and it is their 'different light' which makes this anthology so intriguing and enjoyable for readers in Britain.