The Accidental Indies

by Robert Finley Narrated by Julian Casey

Overview

At once moving and lyrical, The Accidental Indies is a tale in which we join Christopher Columbus on a fantastical voyage through western seas and Western imagination. Robert Finley imagines, sings, charts, and paints the story of Columbus's problematic 1492 expedition to the Caribbean, creating a world that is as vivid and compelling as the explorer's own voyage to the misnamed "Indies".

It is a journey through wondrous words that begins with Columbus's earliest explorations when he first "tests the heft and roundness of this earth against his infant head" by stepping from the edge of his rocking cradle to come up short on the boards of the nursery floor. Finley charts a course for us through the days at sea, through the voyage itself, its records and commentaries, into the fraught territory of Columbus' imaginary "Indies" and the representation of this New World on his return to Spain.

This incisive and luminescent story, scrupulously grounded in sixteenth-century sources, illuminates the power that “naming” has to create a world - in this case a world still haunted by being the accidental Indies. It is a book about how we perceive and represent the world around us, about the creative and destructive power of language. Through its elaboration of the rich and lively ironies of the Columbus story, The Accidental Indies looks at the nature of storytelling itself.

Editorial Reviews

Internet Book Watch

This tale of Christopher Columbus provides a vivid story of his expedition to the Caribbean, providing a fictionalized account of his earliest explorations and including a healthy dose of poetic description. A unique "you are there" approach brings the experience to life: "It is not disappointment, but surprise to find so little of what he had been thinking of, ghosting in on the making tide to a broad and shining bay. The bosun sounds the still water. At every fall the lead marks its own centre; ripples widening outward link with those before and after, the ship's course marked by this light chain."
—Internet Book Watch

Alberto Manguel

Robert Finley has rescued Christopher Columbus' adventures and restored them to the realm of myth from whence they sprung.

John Casey

Boldly imagined and splendidly written.
—National Book Award winner for Spartina

Dava Sobel

You do not simply read this story, you ride it, relish, and sometimes you find yourself IN it.
—author of Galileo's Daughter

From the Publisher

"Exquisitely written. The Accidental Indies is a brilliant and utterly original work of literature." Eric Ormsby


"Finley appropriates and recasts the Columbus myth in order to provide a thought-provoking commentary on the possessive and interpretative power of words, legends, and visions." Publishers Weekly


"Finleys lyrical style, conjuring up the exotic, is reminiscent of Marlowe's or Shakespeare's. Finley's description of Columbus painstakingly decorating his chart of the newly discovered islands savours of the golden qualities of the age - gorgeous richness and variety in everything from apparel to poetry." The Globe and Mail


"Robert Finley's gorgeous, imaginative first book of fiction, beautifully explores the theme of mistaken identity: how perceptions of the new are twisted by where we come from, how our cultural signifiers reshape unfamiliar environments and people to suit our prejudices ... What a lovely book." The Georgia Straight


"Read this short book and then read it again so that you can begin filling in all the marginalia that you missed the first time: the "fantasies - grotesques - titillations and taboos." The Accidental Indies is a work of adventure and exploration, about Co

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176374971
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	10/30/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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