21st Century
A01=Gregory O'Brien
Author_Gregory O'Brien
Category=DCF
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
New Zealand
Product details
- ISBN 9781857548532
- Dimensions: 135 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 30 Mar 2007
- Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
At once a travel book, autobiographical novel, memoir and historical survey, News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore begins with its narrator suspended in the salty, buoyant waters of the Mediterranean and develops into a discursive essay on family life, love and deep sea diving. Not only is the book a paean to the south of France, it is a history of things that explode under water, taking the reader by way of the trenches of World War One and the Rainbow Warrior bombing to the writer's experiences of diving off Menton. Adrift on an ocean of art history, literature and music, the book introduces a cast of underwater characters including Jacques Cousteau, Dominique Prieur, Henri Matisse and the naked river-swimming Mother Aubert, a 19th century nun who presents something of a role-model for the narrator as he negotiates various streams of thought.
Born inMatamata, New Zealand , in 1961, Gregory O'Brien has lived in Wellingtonsince 1989, where he is writer, painter and senior curator at City Gallery Wellington. As well as numerous pamphlets, he has published seven collections of poetry, among them Days Beside Water (Carcanet, 1994) and Afternoon of an Evening Train(Victoria University Press, 2005). With Jenny Bornholdt and Mark Williams, he co-edited An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry (In English), which appeared from Oxford University Press in 1997. A collection of his writings about New Zealand art and literature, After Bathing at Baxter's; Essays and Notebooks, was published in 2002. His books about New Zealand visual arts include Lands and Deeds; Profiles of New Zealand Painters(1996), Hotere out the Black Window (1997) and Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for young people(AUP, 2004). His book-length meditation on France, New Zealand, Modernism and sub-aquaticism is titled News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (Carcanet 2007).
