www.gwales.com - 9781854114013, To Babel and Back

A collection of essays covering a variety of subjects and locations, such as the use of depleted uranium in modern weapons to Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the discovery of the supposed site of the Tower of Babel. A sequel to Watching the Fire-eater and Badlands.

Casgliad o ysgrifau sy'n trafod amrywiaeth o bynciau ac yn cyfeirio at amryfal leoedd a phobl mewn rhannau gwahanol o'r byd, gan gynnwys sôn am y defnydd o wraniwm mewn arfau modern; Irac dan lywodraeth Saddam Hussein; a darganfod safle honedig Tŵr Babel. Dilyniant i Watching the Fire-eater a Badlands.

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Gwales Review

Robert Minhinnick loves Wales with the passion of a poet. He believes it is a mistake to try and define Welshness, but rather to live it, in so doing adding to its meaning rather than diminishing it with prosaic boundaries. In To Babel and Back he does just that, taking his Welshness with him on a lyrical journey around the globe, adding to the cultural well of what it means to be Welsh in a global context, and at the same time finding unexpected parallels between the peoples and places he finds and thcse of his homeland.

Like Jan Morris before him, Robert Minhinnick is an intellectual traveller. This is no simple travelogue, but rather food for thought, that conveys the author's political and environmental concerns. The book contains a series of fifteen poetic travel essays interwoven with Minhinnick's "radioactive writings" — a personal audit of the passage of depleted uranium from the US to Sadam Hussain's Iraq, together with an investigation of the devastating effects of the weaponry and technologies of the first Gulf War on the Iraqi people.

With subject matter like this, this isn't always a comfortable read, but, like all good travel writing, there are still many comforting moments when Minhinnick finds something familiar in the far away; being in New York and reminded of home by the changing light on the Empire State building, or describing picking pears in his mother's garden whilst a European heatwave forms the backdrop for a discussion on climate change.

Robert Minhinnick's skill is presenting global concerns in a poetic, almost intimate way, that make the shocking and sometimes bizarre feel part of our world, part of our concern.

Michael Nobbs

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatad Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.

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The following has been provided by the Publisher:

Further Information:

To Babel and Back
In this prize-winning volume of essays, Robert Minhinnick leads us from South America to Baghdad between Gulf wars, from post-wall Berlin to Prague, from Macedonia to rural Québec. This is no travelogue, however, but a series of poetic prose-pieces, a heady mix of narrative, meditation and Baudelairean dream, rich in myth and symbolism. And wherever the trail takes him, his native south Wales is never far away. Buenos Aires evokes not only the elegant literary ghost of Borges: the burning of palm trees in the street by those ruined in the financial crises recalls his grandfather cycling up a street whose elms were cut for fuel by hungry strikers' families in 1921. While he visits a terminally ill friend in a Welsh hospital ward the notes of a mobile phone transport him to an Italian opera house; he reads Welsh poetry in the dope-heavy air of Amsterdam. The car-park wall at the local supermarket brings into collision childhood memories of the fever hospital it once enclosed and his sister's recent car accident. Tiny coincidences and parallels weave connections between apparently disparate elements at home or abroad. Time as well as space becomes both linear and circular, shifting from the present to the recent past, to distant family history or to the geological time which formed and still forms the landscape. These essays often read as quests, where searching for a meaning or pattern is as important as geography. Minhinnick leads the reader into labyrinths, never quite revealing the goal, forcing us to think back to the starting point. His confident authorial voice, whether elegiac, humorous, tormented or self-deprecating, guides us through a dazzling kaleidoscope.
Cyfnewidfa Lên Cymru/Wales Literature Exchange

Prizes:

Winner of Wales Book of the Year 2006

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This title is categorised and/or sub-categorised as follows:

Essays and Talks ( in English)
- Essays ( in English)