A high wind in Jamaica
Type
Book
Authors
Category
823 English Fiction
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Publication Year
2005
Publisher
The Folio Society, United Kingdom
Pages
178 pages
Subject
Children -- Jamaica -- Fiction. English fiction -- Jamaica. Pirates -- Fiction.
Tags
Abstract
A brilliant chronicle of two sensitive children's violent voyage from innocence to experience.
After a terrible hurricane levels their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thorntons decide to send their children back to the safety and comfort of England. On the way their ship is set upon by pirates, and the children are accidentally transferred to the pirate vessel. Jonsen, the well-meaning pirate captain, doesn't know how to dispose of his new cargo, while the children adjust with surprising ease to their new life. As this strange company drifts around the Caribbean, events turn more frightening and the pirates find themselves increasingly incriminated by the children's fates. The most shocking betrayal, however, will take place only after the return to civilization.
The swift, almost hallucinatory action of Hughes's novel, together with its provocative insight into the psychology of children, made it a best seller when it was first published in 1929 and has since established it as a classic of twentieth-century literature - an unequaled exploration of the nature, and limits, of innocence.
After a terrible hurricane levels their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thorntons decide to send their children back to the safety and comfort of England. On the way their ship is set upon by pirates, and the children are accidentally transferred to the pirate vessel. Jonsen, the well-meaning pirate captain, doesn't know how to dispose of his new cargo, while the children adjust with surprising ease to their new life. As this strange company drifts around the Caribbean, events turn more frightening and the pirates find themselves increasingly incriminated by the children's fates. The most shocking betrayal, however, will take place only after the return to civilization.
The swift, almost hallucinatory action of Hughes's novel, together with its provocative insight into the psychology of children, made it a best seller when it was first published in 1929 and has since established it as a classic of twentieth-century literature - an unequaled exploration of the nature, and limits, of innocence.
Description
Richard Hughes's celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.
Biblio Notes
Genre/Form: Fiction
Material Type: Fiction
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Richard Hughes
OCLC Number: 61195884
Notes: Originally published: London : Chatto and Windus, 1929.
Description: xiii, 178 pages ; 23 cm
Responsibility: Richard Hughes ; introduced by Michael Holroyd ; illustrated by Mary Kuper.
Material Type: Fiction
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Richard Hughes
OCLC Number: 61195884
Notes: Originally published: London : Chatto and Windus, 1929.
Description: xiii, 178 pages ; 23 cm
Responsibility: Richard Hughes ; introduced by Michael Holroyd ; illustrated by Mary Kuper.
Number of Copies
1