Competition time: support your local bureau and win books!
We’re giving away books to gain some more support and followers. We have one copy each of these fantastic books about exploration and discovery to give away:
Julian Hoffman’s amazing The Small Heart of Things
In The Small Heart of Things, Julian Hoffman intimately examines the myriad ways in which connections to the natural world can be deepened through an equality of perception, whether it’s a caterpillar carrying its house of leaves, transhumant shepherds ranging high mountain pastures, a quail taking cover on an empty steppe, or a Turkmen family emigrating from Afghanistan to Istanbul. The narrative spans the common — and often contested — ground that supports human and natural communities alike, seeking the unsung stories that sustain us.
Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts’ Edgelands
Edgelands explores a wilderness that is much closer than you think: a debatable zone, neither the city nor the countryside, but a place in-between — so familiar it is never seen for looking. Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, ignored, the edgelands have become the great wild places on our doorsteps, places so difficult to acknowledge they barely exist. Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as ‘wild’, and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own.
Bohumil Hrabal’s collection of essays cum letters on writing, drinking and the Cold War ending, Total Fears: Selected Letters to Dubenka
In these letters written to April Gifford between 1989 and 1991 but never sent, Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) chronicles the momentous events of those years as seen, more often than not, from the windows of his favorite pubs. In his palavering style that has marked him as one of the major writers and innovators of post-war European literature, Hrabal gives a humorous and at times moving account of life in Prague under Nazi occupation, communism, and the brief euphoria following the revolution of 1989 when anything seemed possible, even pink tanks. Interspersed are fragmented memories of trips taken to Britain — as he attempted to track down every location mentioned in Eliot’s “The Waste Land” — and the United States, where he ends up in one of Dylan Thomas’s haunts comparing the waitresses to ones he knew in Prague. The result is a masterful blend of personal history and poetic prose.
To win one of these books, just do the following: if you are on Medium, just follow us and leave a comment below indicating which book you’d like to receive. If you are on Twitter, just follow us there and tweet the book title at us. If you are neither on Medium nor Twitter, just send a mail to tdbfpi@gmail.com, indicating which book you’d like. For all the above, you can use #supportyourbureau. The competition ends on Tuesday, May 2nd, 6 pm GMT. Good luck!
