Bøker av Pamela Petro

For readers of H Is for Hawk, an intimate memoir of belonging and loss and a mesmerizing travelogue through the landscapes and language of WalesHiraeth is a Welsh word that's famously hard to translate. Literally, it can mean "long field" but generally translates into English, inadequately, as "homesickness." At heart, hiraeth suggests something like a bone-deep longing for an irretrievable place, person, or time—an acute awareness of the presence of absence.    In The Long Field, Pamela Petro braids essential hiraeth stories of Wales with tales from her own life—as an American who found an ancient home in Wales, as a gay woman, as the survivor of a terrible AMTRAK train crash, and as the daughter of a parent with dementia. Through the pull and tangle of these stories and her travels throughout Wales, hiraeth takes on radical new meanings. There is traditional hiraeth of place and home, but also queer hiraeth; and hiraeth triggered by technology, immigration, ecological crises, and our new divisive politics. On this journey, the notion begins to morph from a uniquely Welsh experience to a universal human condition, from deep longing to the creative responses to loss that Petro sees as the genius of Welsh culture. It becomes a tool to understand ourselves in our time.   A finalist for the Wales Book of the Year Award and named to the Telegraph's and Financial Times's Top 10 lists for travel writing, The Long Field is an unforgettable exploration of “the hidden contours of the human heart.”

The idiosyncratic and witty travelogue of a young Welsh-speaking woman who travels the globe in search of Welsh communities. ¿ The acclaimed debut of a remarkably witty and engaging travel writer (Bill Bryson meets Jan Morris). Her next book will explore the world through its theme parks!¿ At once a fascinating travelogue and an innovative book about the consequences of language.'A delightful read - a marvellous mixture of wit, nostalgia, character description and atmosphere setting. Anyone who is Welsh, or who has connections with Wales, should read it, as should anyone who isn't, and hasn't, but who simply wants to work out what on earth is going on in the minds, hearts and mouths of those for whom Welsh is the language of heaven.' Professor David Crystal

An enthralling, rollicking tour among the storytellers of the American Deep South.