Voices of the Old Sea [Paperback]

Norman Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2006

After World War II, Norman Lewis returned to Spain and settled in the remote fishing village of Farol, on what is now Costa Brava. Voices of the Old Sea describes his three successive summers in that almost medieval community where life revolved around the seasonal sardine catches, Alcade's bar, and satisfying feuds with neighboring villages. It's lucky Lewis was there when he was. Soon after, Spain was discovered by its neighbors in a more prosperous northern Europe, and the tourist tide that ensued flowed inexorably over the old ways of the town and its inhabitants.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lewis really goes deep, like a sharp, polished knife."

From the Publisher

8 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786716908
• ISBN-13: 978-0786716906
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,145,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A small gem of travel writing, April 7, 2008

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voices of the Old Sea (Hardcover)

This is the first book I have read by Norman Lewis (d. 2003), and I can now appreciate the encomniums on the book covers and first page: "one of the best writers . . . of our century" (Graham Greene); "magical storyteller"; "the best, and most underrated, English travel writer of the 20th century"; and on and on in a similar vein. VOICES OF THE OLD SEA is an account of three summers that Lewis spent in a subsistence-level fishing village along the Costa Brava coast of Northeast Spain in the late 1940s. As things happened, it also is an account of the beginning of the end of centuries-old ways of life, swept aside by modernization and capitalism.

Lewis does not really decry the changes that slowly begin transforming his particular pocket of rural Spain. Indeed, he rarely casts judgments, other than occasional aesthetic ones. He is somewhat self-effacing. Rather than imposing himself on his hosts and environs, he blends in, and as a result otherwise insular and superstitious locals begin to open up to him and allow him to observe and participate in activities from which outsiders usually are excluded.

But the value and appeal of VOICES OF THE OLD SEA is not so much in its subject as in the telling. Lewis was a superb writer, with a gentle sense of humor and irony. The publisher lauds Lewis as "the father of modern travel writing". If only that were truer. If only more modern travel writers had Lewis's skill and his modesty.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This fine old book. . ., January 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Voice of the Old Sea (Paperback)

describes a lost world--a tiny village on the Spanish Mediterranean coast subsisting on fishing and the harvesting of cork. The book is simple and evocative. The reader creates the tragedy himself or herself with the certain knowledge that Lewis is detailing a world, and way of life, that have now ceased to exist.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE MASTER'S GREATEST MOMENT, October 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Voices of the Old Sea (ISIS Large Print) (Hardcover)

Anyone who has read anything by Norman Lewis knows that he is unquestionably the world's greatest living travel writer and one of the best who ever lived. I have read everything he has written and this is my favourite. It combines stylish simplicity and poetic resonance to create a haunting evocation of a lost time and place. A masterpiece.