The Accidental Indies
Winner - Cunard First Book Award - Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia (2001), Winner - Governor General's Award - Literary Award in the category of French Translation (2004)
Description
At once moving and lyrical, The Accidental Indies is a tale in which we join Christopher Columbus on a fantastical voyage through western seas and Western imagination. Robert Finley imagines, sings, charts, and paints the story of Columbus's problematic 1492 expedition to the Caribbean, creating a world that is as vivid and compelling as the explorer's own voyage to the misnamed "Indies".
It is a journey through wondrous words that begins with Columbus's earliest explorations when he first "tests the heft and roundness of this earth against his infant head" by stepping from the edge of his rocking cradle to come up short on the boards of the nursery floor. Finley charts a course for us through the days at sea, through the voyage itself, its records and commentaries, into the fraught territory of Columbus' imaginary "Indies" and the representation of this New World on his return to Spain.
This incisive and luminescent story, scrupulously grounded in sixteenth-century sources, illuminates the power that "naming" has to create a world - in this case a world still haunted by being the accidental Indies. It is a book about how we perceive and represent the world around us, about the creative and destructive power of language. Through its elaboration of the rich and lively ironies of the Columbus story, The Accidental Indies looks at the nature of storytelling itself.
Reviews
"I was utterly enchanted by The Accidental Indies. With humour, inventiveness and an exquisite gift for words, Robert Finley has rescued Columbus's adventures from the excesses of hagiography and the disparagements of outrage, and restored them, once again, to the realm of myth from whence they sprung." Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
"Everything about The Accidental Indies envelops the reader in a warm sensuousness ... Through the lilt of his remarkably mellifluous prose, Finley allows us to the feel the wind on our face and to taste the salt air. We marvel, as Europeans must have then, at the first sight of parrots ... Finley gives us the opportunity to stand watch all night with Columbus, keeping the admiral company as we wait for land." The Citizen's Weekly Books
"The Accidental Indies is a gem - it is boldly imagined and splendidly written." John Casey, author of the National Book Award winner, Spartina
"Finley appropriates and recasts the Columbus myth in order to provide a thought-provoking commentary on the possessive and interpretative power of words, legends, and visions." Publishers Weekly
"A meditation on Christopher Columbus, the poetic prose of this book evokes the life's journey of the great navigator, from early childhood to his discovery of Hispaniola. By reproducing all the stylistic inventions of the author, the translator has masterfully rendered this prose poem filled with historical detail and the magnificent vocabulary of sailing ships and the sea. He makes us actually hear the intertwining voices of this dream-like tale." Jury for the 2004 Governor-General's Literary Award in the category of French Translation
"Exquisitely written. The Accidental Indies is a brilliant and utterly original work of literature." Eric Ormsby
"Robert Finley's gorgeous, imaginative first book of fiction, beautifully explores the theme of mistaken identity: how perceptions of the new are twisted by where we come from, how our cultural signifiers reshape unfamiliar environments and people to suit our prejudices ... What a lovely book." The Georgia Straight
"This is a beautiful book - a kind of magic, shamanic flight to find the inner meaning of Columbus. It is a work of literary power and rare imagination - a discovery of the great discoverer ... It is a rare combination of literature and history in a form that is daring and inspiring." Hugh Brody, author of Maps & Dreams
"The grace and poetry of Finley's text ensure that any moralizing remains subordinate to the power of his classic storytelling. Striking images, rhythmic phrasing, and an eclectic vocabulary that prefers Anglo-Saxon to Latin results in a text that is as thrilling as it is serene." The Harvard Book Review
"Imagine the infant Columbus vaulting out of his cradle, striking his head on the world, and spawning his megalomaniacal wanderlust. Thus Robert Finley begins his exquisite prose poem, The Accidental Indies, a fantasy of precise language and provocative imagery. I suspect Finley of past lives or channeling or worse, because he seems to know what really happened heading westward over the water in 1492. You do not simply read this story, you ride it, relish it, and sometimes you find yourself IN it." Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter
"Read this short book and then read it again so that you can begin filling in all the marginalia that you missed the first time: the "fantasies - grotesques - titillations and taboos." The Accidental Indies is a work of adventure and exploration, about Columbus certainly, but also about how storytelling and language fills out but never replaces our metaphors and our own travels." The Montreal Gazette
"The Accidental Indies reads with a lyricism and intelligence that is hard to match in other modern fictions. It could be classified along with Michael Ondaatje's Coming through Slaughter and Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces." Carolyn Smart
"Finleys lyrical style, conjuring up the exotic, is reminiscent of Marlowe's or Shakespeare's. Finley's description of Columbus painstakingly decorating his chart of the newly discovered islands savours of the golden qualities of the age - gorgeous richness and variety in everything from apparel to poetry." The Globe and Mail