When the Mountains Dance: Love, loss and hope in the heart of Italy

Author:   Christine Toomey
Publisher:   Orion Publishing Co
ISBN:  

9781474614658


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   28 March 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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When the Mountains Dance: Love, loss and hope in the heart of Italy


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Overview

'In the wake of the strongest earthquake in Italy for nearly forty years and the many aftershocks that followed, Italians began speaking of the earth beneath our feet as la terra ballerina, the dancing earth. The dance they spoke of was unrelenting.' Foreign correspondent Christine Toomey spent years renovating her glorious, long-abandoned hill-top home in Le Marche, Italy, as a haven of rest from covering crises around the world. But in 2016, the peace and beauty of this beloved landscape were thrown into chaos when a series of powerful earthquakes struck the heart of the Apennines. Wracked with grief for a place still reverberating with seismic aftershocks, Christine decided that one way of preserving the community was to tell its history. Fuelled by the artefacts uncovered in her attic - including oil paintings and lithographs, a map, thick with dust but showing details of the earthquake that obliterated Messina in 1908, and century-old letters belonging to the enigmatic priest who had occupied her house a century earlier - Christine set out on a journey to tell the story of the earthquakes that devastated the region. The result is a heartfelt, insightful and life-affirming story about the places that make us, and the life-changing thunderbolts that can come at all of us, at any time, from any quarter.

Full Product Details

Author:   Christine Toomey
Publisher:   Orion Publishing Co
Imprint:   Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Dimensions:   Width: 12.80cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 19.60cm
Weight:   0.240kg
ISBN:  

9781474614658


ISBN 10:   1474614655
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   28 March 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

A brilliant memoir -- Mariella Frostrup An optimistic, airy book with high cultural references. From the drama of the earthquake, from that dancing of the mountains, from those territories damaged but not vanquished, Christine shows us all of them -- Adolfo Leoni * Il Resto Del Carlino * A beautifully written, many-layered and poetic book . . . As well as a description of an existential disaster, this is also a meditation on the fragility of the human state and mind and life itself. Brilliant! There is deep meditation here -- Adam Williams, author of THE BOOK OF THE ALCHEMIST Engaging and contemplative -- Caroline Moorehead * TLS *


[A] brilliant memoir -- Mariella Frostrup


Author Information

Christine Toomey is an award-winning journalist and author who covered foreign affairs for the Sunday Times for more than twenty years. She has reported from over sixty countries worldwide and has been based as a correspondent in Mexico City, Paris and Berlin. Her journalism has been syndicated globally and she has twice won Amnesty International's Magazine Story of the Year. Christine lives in London with her daughter, escaping when possible to the long abandoned hill-top home she spent years renovating in Le Marche, Italy.

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