Continent [Paperback]

Jim Crace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1988

This novel explores the tribes and communities, conflicts and superstitions, flora and fauna of a wholly spellbinding place: an imaginary seventh continent. In these seven tales Jim Crace travels a strange and wonderful landscape, as fabulous as it is eerily familiar.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To those who say there's nothing new to be written or read, Jim Crace has responded. For this provocative collection of short stories, Crace created a whole new continent. Unnamed and unspecified, the continent nevertheless resonates with characters, developments, contradictions and examinations of the path and power of progress. In one story electricity comes to a country in the form of a giant fan; in another a government agent out to exploit a primitive people discovers the beauty of traditional life. The book, which won a Whitbread Prize, takes us to a new world in a journey that causes us look more closely at our own. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Crace's continent is mainly dry and under-developed, peopled by bureaucrats and country folk whose conflicting values give these loosely connected chapters their essential tension. In "Electricity," the wiring of a small village pits superstition and ancient innocence against technology and progress, leaving nothing much changed in the end. The nearly perfect "In Heat," featuring a forest tribe whose women conceive at only one time of year, centers on the effect of their discovery by a biologist doing field workall told in the voice of his daughter, who late in her life learns a truth about her origin. A village scribe in "Sins and Virtues" withstands cultural exploitation, remaining true to himself and his art in the face of profit and greed. Crace's imagination is fabulous, conjuring landscapesurban and ruralthat are concrete, credible and mythic at once. It's a topography of the interior, where primitive magical explanations of phenomena are as adequate (and inadequate) as those of progress and technology. Distinguished by unfaltering authority and range of voice, Crace's novel has been awarded the Whitbread and the David Higham prizes in England. This is stunningly powerful, visionary writing.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Harpercollins (April 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060914777
• ISBN-13: 978-0060914776
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,128,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Quincunx Of Sevens, September 14, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Continent (Paperback)

Prior to the first of the stories in this book there is a quote. It is from The Histories Of Pycletius, and it makes a statement upon 4 topics that are each comprised of 7 parts. Author Jim Crace adds his collection of stories, which are 7 in number, to bring the confines of a pentagon of like numbers to a close. While this is only the second time I have had the pleasure of reading this man's work, I can safely say that every word of his writing is carefully chosen. Whether this book grew from the quote, or was merely a pleasant coincidence, only the Author knows. I doubt it was chance. I think it is another demonstration of the unique writing this man shares with readers.

An imagined 7th continent is revealed in 7 stories. This imagined land might not be named or located for us, however it certainly is amongst those we do know, and regularly interacts with its neighbors. Pycletius states that his 7th landmass has business, and it is that of both trade and superstition. The Continent of Mr. Crace shares the attributes that Pycletius lists, and the darker sides of man. It was almost as though he was going to tell tales of the 7 deadly sins. While some of the stories do fit those themes, to say that others do would be a stretch. If you were to add some of the fables of Aesop, then you would have the stories covered.

These stories do contain some themes that are familiar. What makes them special is Jim Crace's unique way of presenting his variations. A person who jogs for exercise would seem to be completely benign, however Jim Crace demonstrates how this seemingly harmless activity can damage a small town. The concept of tradition is examined, and success when it means money can become insidious, and destructive.

Jim Crace is an author whose work I initially found difficult to engage with. I started with his work, "Quarantine", and now starting here with, "Continent", I hope to read the balance of his work is the sequence he wrote it. The man's work is fascinating, and is well worth any initial hurdles you may experience.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE LANDSCAPE AS CHARACTER, April 2, 2002

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Continent (Paperback)

In Jim Crace's first novel (actually in disguise a seven stories), CONTINENT, the talented author of QUARANTINE and THE GIFT OF STONES has brought to life the very landscape of the story itself, making it the 'character' that all of the stories have in common, the thread that ties them all together.

It is quite an invention -- unique, alien and unrecognizable, a seventh continent, unnamed, for which Crace has conceived languages, people and cultures that will not allow themselves to be pigeonholed by the reader's preconceptions. This device is a risky one -- and Crace pulls it off beautifully. He has brought into being a clean, empty slate upon which to paint these tales -- and in doing so he has freed himself of societal conventions.

By separating the reader from the known world, Crace holds up a painting for us to lose ourselves within -- and before we know it, it becomes a mirror, and we are looking at ourselves, but in a fabulist landscape wherein our beliefs and actions are actually more sharply in focus than if they were in their usual surroundings. Very effective.

I have only (so far) read the two other works by Crace that I mentioned above -- and I enjoyed them thoroughly as well. This book is quite different -- reminding me, as one of the quotes on the book jacket mentioned, of Italo Calvino. Not bad company for Mr. Crace to share, in my opinion -- and I'm not saying his work is derivative of Calvino's art in any way. I'm also reminded of the recent novel by Gaetan Soucy, THE LITTLE GIRL WHO WAS TOO FOND OF MATCHES, another amazing creation of a seemingly parallel -- but just as unnamable -- space and time.

There is much to be gained and absorbed from this work -- it will definitely merit repeated readings. I'm also looking forward to reading BEING DEAD and THE DEVIL'S LARDER.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating stories, March 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Continent (Paperback)

I still don't understand why this book won an award for a first *novel*, since it comes off as a book of seven short stories with no apparent interconnections. Nonetheless, as a book of stories it is fascinating--sometimes funny, always sharp, often just bizarre. In "In Heat," a woman narrates the story of her father's career as a "Natural Scientist," obsessed with the study of feminine biological processes. In the last paragraph, the narrator suddenly launches into a strange, driven series of questions about herself and her relation to all of this, and the result is a truly stunning, haunting finale. In "Sins and Virtues," by far the wisest and and most cleverly balanced tale in the collection, a calligraphic artist deals with the push and pull of an art market driven by blind fetishism. His art and his own "sins and virtues" come together ironically in his final, perfectly composed masterpiece. I recommend this book highly. It did seem a bit uneven at times, but I found it well worth the ride