Sidney English Fellow Dr Edward Wilson-Lee’s newest book, A History of Water, has earned high praise all round by transporting readers on a journey across the Renaissance globe through the eyes of Luís de Camões and Damião de Góis.
A History of Water: Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Versions of Global History follows the stories of a Portuguese poet and philosopher on their travels abroad during the religiously turbulent mid-sixteenth century. Luís de Camões and Damião de Góis exchange alternating biographies in Edward’s book and capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life.
Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night, commented, “A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A History of Water is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement”.
The British national press are equally as impressed with The Telegraph awarding A History of Water five stars, while The Sunday Times published a rave review, “The book itself is something of a wonder: beautifully written and utterly mesmerising. I loved every page.”
A History of Water, published by HarperCollins Publishers, is on sale from today.
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