Alistair Macleod

In 1779, driven out of his home, Calum MacDonald sets sail from the Scottish Highlands with his extensive family. After a long, terrible journey he settles his family in 'the land of trees' until they become a separate Nova Scotian clan: red-haired and black-eyed, with its own identify, its own history.It is the 1980s by the time our narrator, Alexander MacDonald, tells the story of his family, a thrilling and passionate story that intersects with history: with Culloden, where the clans died, and with the 1759 battle at Quebec that was won when General Wolfe sent in the fierce Highlanders because it was 'no great mischief if they fall'.

From the internationally celebrated author of No Great Mischief comes a moving short story of three generations of men from a single family whose lives are forever altered by the long shadow of war. In the early morning hours of November 11, David MacDonald, a veteran of the Second World War, stands outside his Cape Breton home, preparing to attend what will likely be his last Remembrance Day parade. As he waits for the arrival of his son and grandson, he remembers his decision to go to war in desperation to support his young family. He remembers the horrors of life at the frontlines in Ortona, Italy, and then what happened in Holland when the Canadians arrived as liberators. He remembers how the war devastated his own family, but gave him other reasons to live. As the story unfolds, other generations enter the scene. What emerges is an elegant, life-affirming meditation on the bond between fathers and sons, "how the present always comes out of the past," and how even in the midst of tragedy and misfortune there exists the possibility for salvation. His first new short story in over a decade, Remembrance is a powerful reminder of why Alistair MacLeod is one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

The stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood are remarkably simple a family is drawn together by shared and separate losses, a childs reality conflicts with his parents memories, a young man struggles to come to terms with the loss of his father.Yet each piece of writing in this critically acclaimed collection is infused with a powerful life of its own, a precision of language and a scrupulous fidelity to the reality of time and place, of sea and Maritime farm.Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, the seven stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood map the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between man and woman, parent and child.

The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeods As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their own peculiar mortality against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change.His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeods international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration.

The story is simple, seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. As an adult he remembers the way things were back home on the farm on the west coast of Cape Breton. The time was the 1940s, but the hens and the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the horse made it seem ancient. The family of six children excitedly waits for Christmas and two-year-old Kenneth, who liked Halloween a lot, asks, Who are you going to dress up as at Christmas? I think Ill be a snowman. They wait especially for their oldest brother, Neil, working on the Lake boats in Ontario, who sends intriguing packages of clothes back for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he arrives, to the delight of his young siblings, and shoes the horse before taking them by sleigh through the woods to the nearby church. The adults, including the narrator for the first time, sit up late to play the gift-wrapping role of Santa Claus.The story is simple, short and sweet, but with a foretaste of sorrow. Not a word is out of place. Matching and enhancingthe text are black and white illustrations by Peter Rankin, making this book a perfect little gift.For readers from nine to ninety-nine, our classic Christmas story by one of our greatest writers.

In 1779, driven out of his home, Calum MacDonald sets sail from the Scottish Highlands with his extensive family. After a long, terrible journey he settles his family in the land of trees, and eventually they become a separate Nova Scotian clan: red-haired and black-eyed, with its own identity, its own history.It is the 1980s by the time our narrator, Alexander MacDonald, tells the story of his family, a thrilling and passionate story that intersects with history: with Culloden, where the clans died, and with the 1759 battle at Quebec that was won when General Wolfe sent in the fierce Highlanders because it was no great mischief if they fall.

These slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces: apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child. Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss. As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword: the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness. The stories stand securely outside of fashion while reflecting deep change. Bringing together all Alistair MacLeods short fiction, and including two previously uncollected stories, Island represents the great achievement of one of the worlds finest storytellers.

En 1779, Calum McDonald dejó su tierra natal escocesa para embarcarse en un duro viaje a través del océano. Partió como esposo y padre, y llegó convertido en viudo y abuelo. En las costas salvajes del Canada, "la tierra de los arboles", su familia se asento y prospero a pesar de las dificultades, conservando su espiritu de clan, su orgullo y su historia comun. Alistair MacLeod rinde en esta novela un emotivo homenaje de las tierras y las gentes del Canada que conocio en su niñez y juventud, con una historia de amor, lealtad y lazos familiares.

Estos pausados y maravillosos cuentos —vibrantes y audaces—, aparentemente simples, pero de una extraordinaria destreza y precisión son, sin duda, pequeñas obras maestras. Alistair MacLeod explora, u

Con la naturalidad y elegancia que lo caracterizan, Alistair MacLeod vuelve a acercarnos a su tierra, a sus orígenes. Son sus personajes, como bien dice Jane Urquhart, "reflexivos y emotivos, [...] hombres de notable intimidad no solo con las mujeres y los niños, sino tambien con la aspera belleza de su geografia, con las viejas penas de las leyendas familiares, con la santidad del trabajo, con los ciclos naturales del emparejamiento y la matanza de los animales domesticos, es decir, con la vida misma. [...] Todos estos relatos versan sobre el espiritu masculino, sobre su fortaleza y su vulnerabilidad. Una y otra vez nos vienen a la memoria los antiguos heroes celtas, la discusion etica de Oisin con San Patricio, o el dolor de Finn McCool por la muerte de Bran, su amado perro. Sin embargo, y al mismo tiempo, entramos en contacto mas estrecho con hombres que son parte de nuestro propio mundo, que son nuestros amigos, nuestra familia".

Estos pausados y maravillosos cuentos "vibrantes y audaces", aparentemente simples, pero de una extraordinaria destreza y precisión son, sin duda, pequeñas obras maestras. Alistair MacLeod explora, una vez mas, la complejidad y los misterios sobrecogedores y eternos que anidan en el corazon de las relaciones humanas. Siete son los relatos que trazan aqui un mapa de vinculos estrechos y abismos insalvables entre hombres y mujeres, padres e hijos. Historias de mineros, leñadores, campesinos, pescadores, de sus mujeres y sus vastagos marcadas por recuerdos y mitos."En pocas ocasiones, un escritor consigue ofrecer una obra tan intensa como breve. Sus libros pueden leerse y releerse en un par de dias de descanso. Seran, sin duda, dias bien aprovechados." The New York Times

Estamos en la década de los ochenta. Alexander MacDonald visita a su hermano mayor en Toronto, quien vive inmerso en el alcohol y los recuerdos. Y, aunque en muchos asuntos hay un abismo entre ambos, se siente incapaz de abandonarlo. El desarrollo de su relacion ira revelando acontecimientos claves de la historia familiar que, con distintas variaciones, se repiten de generacion en generacion, asi como el fuerte sentimiento que une a esta saga de emigrantes con Escocia, tierra dolorosamente bella.Con una prosa austera, impactante desde la primera pagina, MacLeod pone de manifiesto su extraordinario talento cada vez mas admirado en España.Uno de los grandes escritores de nuestro tiempo.Michael Ondaatje

En 1779, Calum McDonald dejó su tierra natal escocesa para embarcarse en un duro viaje a través del océano. Partió como esposo y padre, y llegó convertido en viudo y abuelo. En las costas salvajes del Canada, "la tierra de los arboles", su familia se asento y prospero a pesar de las dificultades, conservando su espiritu de clan, su orgullo y su historia comun. Alistair MacLeod rinde en esta novela un emotivo homenaje de las tierras y las gentes del Canada que conocio en su niñez y juventud, con una historia de amor, lealtad y lazos familiares.

Mineros, pescadores, leñadores, campesinos... Los personajes que pueblan el universo compacto y coherente de estos relatos son o han sido habitantes de la fría isla canadiense de Cabo Bretón, gentes de vida sencilla, trabajadores manuales que se mueven en un entorno agreste y duro, pero rebosante de una primitiva belleza. En la mayoria de los casos el tiempo los ha llevado a enfrentarse a decisiones dificiles, se han visto obligados a escoger entre la tradicion y la modernidad, entre los lazos familiares y la desvinculacion, entre las raices y la ruptura con el pasado.Las historias que nos cuenta Alistair MacLeod son tremendamente cercanas e intensas, estan impregnadas de un hipnotico lirismo que atrapa al lector que se acerca a ellas. El enorme talento de este autor canadiense va emergiendo de sus relatos lentamente, con una calma, una concision y una cadencia unicas, de las que pocos, muy pocos narradores pueden presumir. MacLeod, un escritor muy poco prolifico y admiradisimo en America, construye los dieciseis cuentos reunidos en Isla con la paciencia de un artesano y la maestria de un genio.