Holiday

Stanley Middleton’s prize-winning novel is both a precisely observed portrait of English provincial life and a moving exploration of grief and regret."We need Stanley Middleton to remind us what the novel is about. Holiday is vintage Middleton... One has to look at nineteenth-century writing for comparable storytelling." - Sunday TimesEdwin Fisher is at the seaside, but this is no normal beach holiday. To escape the death of his son and the death-throes of his marriage, he has retreated to a place where he had once known the unqualified happiness of childhood. But as painful memories rise unbidden and uncontrolled, Edwin must confront each in turn – realising that without a past there can be no future."At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton's world is easily recognizable... The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour." - A.S. ByattStanley Middleton was born in Bulwell, Nottinghamshire. He published his first novel, A Short Answer, in 1958. Middleton went on to publish 45 novels in a career spanning 50 years. He was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1974, with Holiday. At The Time Of Its Discovery, The American Continent Was Identified As The Fourth World Of Our Planet. Today The Term Has Been Taken Up Again By Its Indian Or Native Peoples To Describe Their Own World - Both Its Threatened Present Condition And Its Political History, Which Stretches Back Thousands Of Years Before Columbus. Using Indigenous Sources As Primary Sources, Book Of The Fourth World Explores The Landscapes And Chronologies Of This World As They Have Been Seen And Interpreted From The Inside. Mapping The Continent By This Literary Means, It Pays Particular Attention To The Well-documented Traditions Of The Nahuatl (aztec) And Maya To The North Of The Isthmus, And Of The Quechua-speaking Inca To The South. According To Both The Literary Evidence And The Testimony Of Native Americans Themselves, Notably At The Quito Conference Of July 1990, An Underlying Coherence Is To Be Found In The Creation Story Told In The Bible Of America, The Popol Vuh Of The Quiche Maya. A Classic Of World Literature, This 16th-century Work Sets Out A Story Of Evolution Understood By Europe Only Hundreds Of Years Later; Its Natural Philosophy Is Now Being Defended, As A Way Of Life Critical To That Of The Planet Itself, In The Tropical Forests Of The Amazon. Taking A Skeptical View Of The 1992 Quincentenary And Respecting The Testimony Of The Indians Themselves, This Study Brings Together A Wide Range Of Evidence From What Is Now Latin And Anglo America. In Doing So, It Offers Detailed Analyses Of Texts Ranging Far Back Into The Centuries Of Civilized Life That Antedated Columbus. Provenance -- Language And Its Instances -- Configurations Of Space -- Configurations Of Time -- Peten -- Tollan -- Turtle Island -- Tahuantinsuyu -- Popol Vuh -- World Ages And Metamorphosis -- The Epic -- American Cosmos -- The Translation Process. Stanley Middleton. Edwin Fisher is on holiday at the English seaside - but this revisiting of childhood haunts is no ordinary holiday. Edwin is seeking to understand the failure of his marriage to Meg. But it turns out that her parents are staying at the same resort - whether by accident or design - and are keen to patch up the relationship. As the past and his enigmatic wife loom larger, deeper truths emerge and the perspective shifts in unexpected ways.--Publisher's description