Overview

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 A TLS Book of the Year 2022 ‘Exhilarating and whip-smart’ THE SUNDAY TIMES From award-winning writer Edward Wilson-Lee, this is a thrilling true historical detective story set in sixteenth-century Portugal. A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

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9780008358228

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Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR A HISTORY OF WATER 'A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A History of Water is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement' Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night 'A truly engrossing read. Wilson-Lee has the rare knack of re-visiting even the most familiar places as if they were being discovered for the first time. His prose is rich, fluent, absorbing, and free from any affectation. He guides his readers through a kaleidoscope of detail, interrelating various themes with consummate skill, each time shedding very bright light on the origins of global history while remaining firmly rooted in the most meticulous yet unobtrusive scholarship' Fernando Cervantes, author of Conquistadores 'This is a terrific book. Through an exploration of the lives and writings of two remarkable sixteenth century figures, Portugal's epic poet, Luis de Camoes and the King's archivist, Damiao de Gois, Edward Wilson-Lee sheds new light on both the Iberian voyages of discovery and on the way the Reformation affected everyone at the time, and raises questions that have gone on troubling us ever since: How can I know myself if I cannot know the Other?' Gabriel Josipovici, author of What Ever Happened to Modernism?

EARLY PRAISE FOR A HISTORY OF WATER 'Erudite and engrossing...the book combines literary flair with deep historical insight... One of its many strengths is its vivid characterisation of people and places, not least those of Lisbon life high and low' The Times 'This exhilarating and whip-smart book...presents two competing visions of global history through the lives of two Portuguese travellers...This book is itself something of a wonder: beautifully written and utterly mesmerising. I loved every page' The Sunday Times 'Exhilarating... passionate... employing prose as luscious as it is meticulous... a delightful book' The Guardian 'Fascinating, elegantly written' The Spectator 'A wonderful - and wonder-full - recreation of a crucial episode in European history...the book has a rare beauty: written with elegant restraint, its every page is rich in a numinous sense of vanishings and misunderstandings' Daily Telegraph 'A fascinating, ingenious and wonderfully readable book, brilliantly conceived... The book is a triumph.' David Abulafia, Literary Review 'A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A History of Water is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement' Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night 'A truly engrossing read. Wilson-Lee has the rare knack of re-visiting even the most familiar places as if they were being discovered for the first time. His prose is rich, fluent, absorbing, and free from any affectation' Fernando Cervantes, author of Conquistadores 'This is a terrific book' Gabriel Josipovici, author of What Ever Happened to Modernism? 'I adored this... This is a dazzling, encyclopaedic history' Dennis Duncan, author of Index, A History of The

EARLY PRAISE FOR A HISTORY OF WATER 'A wonderful - and wonder-full - recreation of a crucial episode in European history...the book has a rare beauty: written with elegant restraint, its every page is rich in a numinous sense of vanishings and misunderstandings' Daily Telegraph 'A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A History of Water is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement' Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night 'A truly engrossing read. Wilson-Lee has the rare knack of re-visiting even the most familiar places as if they were being discovered for the first time. His prose is rich, fluent, absorbing, and free from any affectation. He guides his readers through a kaleidoscope of detail, interrelating various themes with consummate skill, each time shedding very bright light on the origins of global history while remaining firmly rooted in the most meticulous yet unobtrusive scholarship' Fernando Cervantes, author of Conquistadores 'This is a terrific book... Edward Wilson-Lee sheds new light on both the Iberian voyages of discovery and on the way the Reformation affected everyone at the time, and raises questions that have gone on troubling us ever since: How can I know myself if I cannot know the Other?' Gabriel Josipovici, author of What Ever Happened to Modernism? 'I adored this. Not just a real-life murder mystery but a gloriously vivid picture of the early modern world and its global networks... This is a dazzling, encyclopaedic history' Dennis Duncan, author of Index, A History of The

PRAISE FOR A HISTORY OF WATER '[An] exhilarating book... passionate... employing prose as luscious as it is meticulous... delightful' The Guardian 'Erudite and engrossing...the book combines literary flair with deep historical insight... One of its many strengths is its vivid characterisation of people and places, not least those of Lisbon life high and low' The Times 'This exhilarating and whip-smart book...presents two competing visions of global history through the lives of two Portuguese travellers...This book is itself something of a wonder: beautifully written and utterly mesmerising. I loved every page' The Sunday Times 'Enthralling throughout' The Economist 'A wonderful - and wonder-full - recreation of a crucial episode in European history...the book has a rare beauty: written with elegant restraint, its every page is rich in a numinous sense of vanishings and misunderstandings' Daily Telegraph 'Fascinating, elegantly written' The Spectator 'A fascinating, ingenious and wonderfully readable book, brilliantly conceived... The book is a triumph.' David Abulafia, Literary Review 'A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A History of Water is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement' Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night 'A truly engrossing read. Wilson-Lee has the rare knack of re-visiting even the most familiar places as if they were being discovered for the first time. His prose is rich, fluent, absorbing, and free from any affectation' Fernando Cervantes, author of Conquistadores 'This is a terrific book' Gabriel Josipovici, author of What Ever Happened to Modernism? 'I adored this... This is a dazzling, encyclopaedic history' Dennis Duncan, author of Index, A History of The

PRAISE FOR EDWARD WILSON-LEE'S A CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS 'It's a captivating adventure ... For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page ... The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern, but still holding tight to its ancient baggage ... Magnificent.' New York Times 'READ THIS TRANSPORTING BOOK. Take it to the beach, to the countryside wherever - and thank you Edward Wilson-Lee for writing it, and with such a sense of vital grace' Simon Schama 'Perfectly pitched poetic drama - the closest thing documented history can get to magic realism... The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a wonderful book ...The true measure of Edward Wilson-Lee's accomplishment, delivered in a simile-studded prose that is seldom less elegant and often quite beautiful, is to make Hernando's epic, measured library shelves, not nautical miles, every bit as thrilling as his father's story' Financial Times 'Wilson-Lee's book - the first modern biography of Hernando written in English - is far more than just a straight account of a life, albeit a rich one... moving... Wilson-Lee does a fine job of capturing the intellectual excitement of a moment in European history' New Statesman 'Edward Wilson-Lee's fascinating and beautifully written account of how Hernando conceived and assembled his library is set within a highly original biography of the compiler. It's a work of imagination restrained by respect for evidence, of brilliance suitably alloyed by erudition, and of scholarship enlivened by sensitivity and acuity' Literary Review 'Hernando Columbus deserves to be as famous as his father, Christopher... Wilson-Lee's greatest strength is the subtlety with which Hernando's public life as a courtier and his private life as a collector are interwoven ... Wilson-Lee leads us almost by stealth to an understanding of his subject's greatest achievement' Spectator

Author Information

Brought up in Kenya, the child of conservationist parents, Edward Wilson-Lee studied English at University College London and completed a doctorate at Oxford and Cambridge. He now lives in Cambridge with his wife and son, and teaches Shakespeare (among other things) at Sidney Sussex College. Over the past few years he has spent extended periods in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

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