Far and away : reporting from the brink of change : seven continents, twenty-five years / Andrew Solomon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Solomon, Andrew, 1963- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social change.

Social movements.

Physical Description:

xii, 578 pages : illustration ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Other Title:

Far & away

Place of Publication:

New York : Scribner, 2016.

Summary:

Essays chronicle the author's activist stint on the Moscow barricades in 1991, his 2002 account of cultural rebirth in post-Taliban Afghanistan, and other stories of profound change.

Psychologist, lecturer and activist Andrew Solomon's essays about places undergoing seismic political and cultural shifts, around the globe and across a generation. A testament to the importance of travel and bearing witness, they encompass South Africa and Brazil, China and Romania, Guatemala and the Solomon Islands, exploring history as it unfolds, largely through the people who are creating and being shaped by it. He learns from former political prisoners, transgender bartenders, rape victims, and shamans. He describes staring down tanks on the barricades in Moscow during the putsch that ended the Soviet Union, being left adrift at the Great Barrier Reef and brought in for questioning in Qaddafi's Libya, and carousing all night in Kabul with musicians finally able to play again after the US invasion drove away the Taliban. Far and Away chronicles a life's journey to the nexus of hope, courage, and the uncertainty of lived experience, while illuminating the development of Solomon's singularly insightful and empathetic worldview. These essays are rooted in intimate, deeply moving stories that reveal and revel in our common humanity.--Adapted from dust jacket.

Contents:

Dispatches from everywhere

The winter palettes

Three days in August

Young Russia's defiant decadence

Their irony, humor (and art) can save China

The artists of South Africa: separate, and equal

Vlady's conquests

"Don't mess with our cultural patrimony!"

On each palette, a choice of political colors

Sailing to Byzantium

Enchanting Zambia

Phaly Nuon's three steps

The open spaces of Mongolia

Inventing the conversation

Naked, covered in ram's blood, drinking a Coke, and feeling pretty good

An awakening after the Taliban

Museum without walls

Song of Solomons

Children of bad memories

Circle of fire: letter from Libya

All the food in China

Outward opulence for inner peace: the Qianlong Garden of Retirement

Adventures in Antarctica

When everyone signs

Rio, city of hope

In bed with the president of Ghana?

Gay, Jewish, mentally ill, and a sponsor of gypsies in Romania

Myanmar's moment

Lost at the surface.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 533-554) and index.

ISBN:

9781476795041

1476795045

OCLC:

946091867