The Bedside Book Of Beasts: A Wildlife Miscellany

Description

The Bedside Book of Beasts blends the best writing about lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, hyenas, bears, wolves and other alpha predators and their prey with a wealth of extraordinary illustration. Among the writers included are: as Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Walter Benjamin, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, Gerald Durrell, Henri Fabre, E.M. Forster, Jean Giono, Zbigniew Herbert, W. H. Hudson, Ted Hughes, Franz Kafka, Galway Kinnell, Rudyard Kipling, Barry Lopez, Konrad Lorenz, Haruki Murakami, Robert Musil, Theodore Roosevelt, Leo Tolstoy and Laurens van der Post. Among the illustrations are: prehistoric cave paintings, the work of Audubon, Robert Bateman, William Blake, Mark Catesby, Francisco de Goya, Thomas Landseer, Rene Magritte, Peter Paul Rubens and Henri Rousseau, and outstanding wildlife photography. The Bedside Book of Beasts is a captivating celebration of wild animals - both the hunters and the hunted - that draws on folk tales and parables as the work of well known writers, and asks fascinating questions as to whether without an alpha predator there can ever be true wilderness and crucially explores how the balance of nature was disturbed when man first learnt to kill at a distance.

Promotion info

The Bedside Book of Birds sold over 20,000 copies in hardback Author publicity will include interviews and appearances at the key literary festivals from autumn 2009 and through 2010 Stunningly produced, and illustrated throughout in colour with more than 100 images

Reviews

PRAISE FOR 'THE BEDSIDE BOOK OF BIRDS' 'Beautifully compiled and illustrated A wonderful artefact the choice of pictures and text makes the book consistently surprising' Daily Telegraph 'A spellbinding miscellany of images, essays, poems and scientific extracts' The Times 'Anyone who has watched birds, studied them, given them the least attention, will find this a treat well worth buying for the illustrations alone' New Scientist

Author description

Graeme Gibson is the author of four novels including Perpetual Motion and Gentleman Death. A past president of PEN Canada, a council member of WWF Canada, and chairman of Pelee Island Bird Observatory, he lives in Toronto with his wife, the writer Margaret Atwood.