Finn by Jon Clinch

Finn by Jon Clinch

The book Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? is an ethnographer's personal account of the five years he spent in one of the remotest parts of Africa. In the author's comprehensive monograph (eight volumes published by Schwabe) about the Anyuak, a little-known tribe in South Sudan, there was no space left for a portrait of the person who did the fieldwork, his professional and personal itinerary, his experiences and attitudes, his relationship with the local people--let alone for all the adventures he lived when crossing the wilderness and when struggling to stay alive.

The travel autobiography sheds light on the long and tedious process of ethnographic fieldwork; it is both personal and profound, varying between moments of actions and reflections and eventually leading to an intimate encounter with an African culture. The many riveting stories told in the book are signposts of a spiritual, psychological, philosophical, and physically exhausting expedition through arid savannah, flooded plains, and compact walls of elephant grass to the spiritual home of a courageous people who have created in the middle of wilderness a center of humanity. Though the narrative is essentially about the discovery of a foreign culture, it also relates the exploration of the ethnographer's own identity in an environment that didn't offer any possibility to escape.

The book is about thirst, starvation, loneliness and lightening, sickness and death, joy and deliverance, snakes and spirits, shadow, spittle and footprints, and eventually about the author's quest for meaning, beauty, and understanding of the world. The memoir tells a saga about forlornness, hope, and achievement, and last but not least, growing friendships as the only reward for struggle and pain. The researcher's autobiography is captivating for the soul and the mind. It is funny, sad, informative, inspiring, and poetic.

Born and raised in the remote heart of upstate New York, Jon Clinch has been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. His first novel, FINN-the secret history of Huckleberry Finn's father-was named an American Library Association Notable Book and was chosen as one of the year's best books by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor. It won the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Sargent First Novel Prize. His second novel, KINGS OF THE EARTH-a powerful tale of life, death, and family in rural America, based on a true story-was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and led the 2010 Summer Reading List at O, The Oprah Magazine. Clinch has lectured and taught widely, in settings as varied as the National Council of Teachers of English, Williams College, the Mark Twain House and Museum, and Pennsylvania State University. In 2008 he organized a benefit reading for the financially ailing Twain House that literally saved the institution from bankruptcy. Jon Clinch lives with his wife in the Green Mountains of Vermont. They have one daughter.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780692885345
ISBN 10	069288534X
Title	Finn
Author	Jon Clinch
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Unmediated Ink
Year published	2017-05-06
Number of pages	324
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable