£8.99

Watching the Fire-Eater

From Copacabana to urban Yorkshire, from New Mexico to a Welsh funfair, from The Netherlands to the Clare coast, Robert Minhinnick’s world is a shrinking one. Its cast of characters includes Rio beach beggars, Madison Avenue literati, saloon-bar poolsters and millionaire scrap merchants. These essays cover a variety of subjects: third world poverty and the internationalism of alcohol, rugby through the eyes of a vegetarian, nuclear power, sunbathing and a thanksgiving dinner for the demise of Margaret Thatcher. But at the core of this collection is a vivid series of attempts to strip away the exhausted mythologies of the writer’s own country and the increasingly-packaged places he visits. Whether in the rainforest or the big match crowd, Minhinnick’s language, acid, imagist, compassionate, celebrates the people he meets and, fleetingly, defines their lives.

Out of stock

9781854110756
Weight 0.300 kg
Dimensions 200 × 100 × 13 mm
ISBN

978-1854110756

Cover

Paperback

Publication Year

1995