Description

Book Synopsis

''One June day in 1953 aged twelve I sat in a classroom and drew a map.''

The map that the young Hamilton-Paterson drew was of a tropical island, and it prefigured with uncanny accuracy the Philippine island on which, thirty years later, he would spend a full third of each year, entirely alone. It had a coral strand, a field of grass, vertical volcanic cliffs and no water. He survived by fishing and by drinking rainwater.

This is a book about a remarkable and self-sufficient writer''s ''desire to be lost'', and the journey of a conventionally educated Englishman to an island on the far side of the world that aroused in him a feeling of discovering a place he always knew. Hamilton-Paterson writes with incomparable skill about the hard beauty of the sea, of coral reefs and the animals that live in them, and about the fishermen who eke a living among the labyrinth of islands that make up the Philippines.

Playing With Water

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    A Paperback / softback by James Hamilton-Paterson

    £9.99

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Wed 2 Sep 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Faber & Faber
      Published 16 October 2014
      ISBN-13 9780571313990
      978-0571313990
      ISBN-10 057131399X

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      ''One June day in 1953 aged twelve I sat in a classroom and drew a map.''

      The map that the young Hamilton-Paterson drew was of a tropical island, and it prefigured with uncanny accuracy the Philippine island on which, thirty years later, he would spend a full third of each year, entirely alone. It had a coral strand, a field of grass, vertical volcanic cliffs and no water. He survived by fishing and by drinking rainwater.

      This is a book about a remarkable and self-sufficient writer''s ''desire to be lost'', and the journey of a conventionally educated Englishman to an island on the far side of the world that aroused in him a feeling of discovering a place he always knew. Hamilton-Paterson writes with incomparable skill about the hard beauty of the sea, of coral reefs and the animals that live in them, and about the fishermen who eke a living among the labyrinth of islands that make up the Philippines.

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