Sail Away: Stories of Escaping to Sea

by Lena Lencek (Editor), Gideon Bosker (Editor)

Overview

Something happens when men and women put a plank between themselves and the water and set out on a voyage, whether for a day or a lifetime. Now Sail Away brings together the very finest writing about travel on water by a stellar crew of writers. Among those to be included are Joseph Conrad, Jacques Cousteau, Roald Dahl, Lawrence Durrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Thor Heyerdahl, Jonathan Raban, Paul Theroux, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, David Foster Wallace, and Evelyn Waugh. Packaged as the perfect companion to Beach, with atmospheric photos by Beach photographer Mittie Hellmich, Sail Away will be an important addition to the tradition of best-selling books about ships and the sea.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781569245842
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	06/13/2001
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

LENA LENCEK and GIDEON BOSKER specialize in popular culture and have co-written more than ten books, including The Beach: A History of Paradise on Earth (a New York Times Notable Book for 1998) and Beaches, a photographic survey of the world’s most beautiful beaches. Lencek is a professor of Russian and the humanities at Reed College, and Bosker, a physician, is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. They live in Portland, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker, editors of Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea, return this summer with Sail Away: Stories of Escaping to Sea. In this new collection, Lencek and Bosker gather an assortment of fiction and nonfiction covering the experiences and dreams of those who find refuge at sea. With excerpts from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, plus stories by Roald Dahl and James Reid Parker, Lencek and Bosker cover the gamut of maritime adventure. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Despite the security of terra firma, people have long romanticized the idea of being on the water. In this collection of short stories, novel excerpts, and narrative nonfiction, editors Lencek and Bosker (Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea) have compiled selections from an impressive list of authors, including Jules Verne and Paul Theroux, to reflect on the diversity of nautical endeavors. In the introduction, they write, "We've heard it said that `on a ship, there is fate in every plank'...no two voyages are ever alike." And no two stories are alike, from Ann Davidson's account of her solo transatlantic voyage in "My Ship Is So Small" to Daniel Duane's reflections on perfecting the art of surfing in Caught Inside. Most impressive are Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin's "The Gentleman from San Francisco" and Langston Hughes's The Big Sea, both stories that epitomize the transforming power of the ocean. This is a book for sea-gazing landlubbers. Recommended for all public libraries. Stephanie Maher, Warwick, RI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal