Ronald Wright – författare

A sweeping, epic historical novel of exploration and invasion, of conquest and resistance, and of an enduring love that must overcome the destruction of one empire by another   Kidnapped at sea by conquistadors seeking the golden land of Peru, a young Inca boy named Waman is the everyman thrown into extraordinary circumstances.  Forced to become Francisco Pizarro’s translator, he finds himself caught up in one of history’s great clashes of civilizations, the Spanish invasion of the Inca Empire in the 1530s. To survive, he must not only learn political gamesmanship but also discover who he truly is, and in what country and culture he belongs. Only then can he find and be reunited with the love of his life and begin the search for his shattered family, journeying through a land and a time vividly portrayed.   Based closely on real events, The Gold Eaters draws on Ronald Wright’s imaginative skill as a novelist and his deep knowledge of South America to bring alive an epic struggle that laid the foundations of the modern world.

In the tradition of Melville and Stevenson, a superb storyteller -- winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction -- brings literary art of great range and beauty to a South Seas epic. Two tales of passion and intrigue, from the 1890s and the 1990s, reach around the world from Canada, England and West Africa to converge in the Polynesian islands.The story opens as a letter from Olivia, a Canadian filmmaker who writes from a Tahitian jail to the daughter she gave up for adoption at sixteen. Olivia''s search for her own father, an airman missing since the Korean War, has brought her to the South Seas and landed her in prison on a trumped-up murder charge. The other main strand of the novel -- based on fact -- is told in the secret diaries of Frank to have been Jack the Ripper. Frank is driven to write down what he knows when he begins to suspect there are people who wish him out of the way.As she fights to get out of jail, Olivia recalls her own childhood in the English house where Henderson once lived. There, while packing up the family home after her mother''s death, she finds Henderson''s old papers and learns of links between herself and him that she had never known, links that explain her mother''s behaviour and her father''s disappearance.Written with a deep understanding of the landscape and culture of the South Sea islands, Henderson''s Spear is at once a moving study of loss -- of a parent, a child, a past -- and an exploration of historical forces that nearly extinguished a people and still threaten us today. Ronald Wright''s deft touch and luminous prose make this rich, powerful novel utterly compelling.From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of A Short History of Progress comes another surprising, frightening and essential book.The USA is now the world’s lone superpower, whose deeds could make or break this century. For better and worse, America has Americanized the world. How did a marginal frontier society, in a mere two centuries, become the de facto ruler of the world? Why do America’s great achievements in democracy, prosperity and civil rights now seem threatened by forces within itself? Brimming with insight into history and human behaviour, and written in Wright’s captivating style, What Is America? shows how this came to pass; how the United States, which regards itself as the most modern country on earth, is also deeply archaic, a stronghold not only of religious fundamentalism but of “modern” beliefs in limitless progress and a universal mission that have fallen under suspicion elsewhere in the west, a rethinking driven by two World Wars and the reckless looting of our planet. A fresh, passionate look at the past and future of the world’s most powerful nation, What Is America? will reframe the debate about our neighbour and ourselves.From the Hardcover edition.

“Utterly irresistible…The Gold Eaters is truly the gold standard to which all fiction — historical and otherwise — should aspire.” — BuzzfeedA sweeping, epic historical novel of exploration and invasion, of conquest and resistance, and of an enduring love that must overcome the destruction of one empire by another.   Kidnapped at sea by conquistadors seeking the golden land of Peru, a young Inca boy named Waman is the everyman thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Forced to become Francisco Pizarro''s translator, he finds himself caught up in one of history''s great clashes of civilzations, the Spanish invasion of the Incan Empire of the 1530s. To survive, he must not only learn political gamesmanship but also discover who he truly is, and in what country and culture he belongs. Only then can he be reunited with the love of his life and begin the search for his shattered family, journeying through a land and a time vividly depicted here. Based closely on real historical events, The Gold Eaters draws on Ronald Wright’s imaginative skill as a novelist and his deep knowledge of South America to bring alive an epic struggle that laid the foundations of the modern world.From the Hardcover edition.

We get to share in his personal discoveries through the humour and good fellowship of the road, full of entertaining misadventures. But there is never any doubt that there is an ultimate purpose to these journeys: a passionate need to bear witness to the truth about the past, after centuries of persecution by an alien ruling class. So through the dense clouds of historical tragedy, Wright exchavates hope that a revival of pride and dignity in Andean culture is possible.

The Maya of Central America created one of the most dazzling civilizations on this earth, which is often compared to Ancient Greece. The Maya had a delight in creation, expressed in art, architecture, pottery, astronomy, mathematics and mythology, all combined with a deep, metaphysical fascination with time. This civilization seems to have collapsed in the ninth century, some five hundred years before the Spanish conquest of America. Ronald Wright travelled through the old territories of the Maya (the jungles and mountains of Guatemala, Belize and Mexico) to explore the ancient roots of their culture and to map out what has survived. Despite civil wars and centuries of oppression by first an Hispanic, then Mestizo culture, he discovers a region where seven million people still speak Mayan languages and struggle to maintain their resilient, indigenous culture. It is at once a riveting journey, written with wit and wisdom, but also a study of a civilization. It is travel writing at its broadest and its best.

In little more than a century, Fiji islanders have made the transition from cannibalism to Christianity, from colony to flourishing self-government, without losing their own culture. As Ronald Wright observes, societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that did, and often used this fact as an excuse to conquer, kill and enslave. Touring cities bustling with Indian merchants, quiet Fijian villages and taking part in communal ceremonies, he attributes the remarkable independence of Fiji to the fact that the indigenous social structure remains intact and eighty-three per cent of the land remains in local hands. Wright tells their story with wit and evident pleasure.

Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century´s runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. A Short History of Progress argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome.