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Luca Antara - Passages in search of Australia
By Martin Edmond Price: $35.00 |
Luca Antara is a rich tapestry of history and the present. Essentially, it parallels the life of the author, an émigré to Sydney, and the life of an historical figure, António da Nova, the servant of a Portuguese explorer who in the 1600s sends him to find out more about Luca Antara (now Australia).
New to Sydney, Martin Edmond finds himself impoverished and displaced. He earns money as a taxi driver but spends his spare time frequenting second hand bookshops trying to learn more about the history of Australia and the wider region. The people Edmond encounters in his taxi and in his search for rare books are varied and strange, offering the reader a voyeuristic glimpse into Sydney’s sub-culture.
Sent to discover more about Luca Antara, António da Nova’s crew mutinied and dumped him on the West Australian coast. He is found by Aborigines who take him on an epic walk across northern Australia to a place frequented by Chinese trepang fisherman who, the Aborigines quite rightly predict, take him back to Malacca and eventually to his master in Portugal who awaits news of his explorations. Edmond’s reading centres upon da Nova, but each book he reads leads to another and the subject becomes broader and increasingly fascinating.
The lives of the two men and the strange customs and unique social mores of each man’s culture and time intertwine throughout the book. It ends with Edmond literally walking in the footsteps of da Nova across northern Australia.
About the Author
Martin Edmond grew up in a remote mountain village in New Zealand’s King Country. After university, he joined avant theatre troupe Red Mole, touring extensively and internationally in the late 1970s. Since 1981 he has lived in Sydney, working as an author and a screenwriter. He has written the feature films Illustrious Energy and Terra Nova; his books include The Autobiography of my Father, The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont and Chronicle of the Unsung, which won the Biography Award at the 2005 Montana Book Awards.
Reviews
"Luca Antara is a book-lover's book, a graceful and mesmerizing blend of history, autobiography, travel and romance."
- JM Coetzee - Nobel Prize in Literature 2003
"Combining elements of a detective story with the laconic unwinding of a campfire yarn, Luca Antara is a thoroughly original, real and fantastical account of a continent that is, in the hands of Martin Edmond vividly discovered and discovered again…a book written under the spell of..several fascinating compulsions – to search, enquire, dream, and to travel."
- Roger McDonald - Miles Franklin Award winner 2006
"Luca Antara will suit anyone with an interest in the early voyages of discovery to Australia and in contemporary life in our largest city. "
- Bookseller + Publisher
"Martin is an original, exacting, and measured writer and I found it very pleasurable to read his descriptions of Sydney, especially of buildings that no longer stand or are irrevocably altered …Luca Antara is a memoir but it is also an almost-scholarly enquiry into some of the speculative tales and fables around the early seafaring discoverers of Australia. It is multi-faceted... There is a feeling of mystery, uncertainty and of the fantastic that backgrounds the entire book - What is real? What is dependable ? - as his obsessions unfold in both intellectual and actual journeys to places that include the Marquesas, Portugal, Paris, the straits of Malacca, Malaysia, Lombok and into encounters with possessors of old manuscripts like the weirdly mysterious Mr Henry Klang."
- Pam Brown - The Deletions - http://thedeletions.blogspot.com
"Graceful, uninhibited, eccentric and filled with humorous pathos Luca Antara is a rare book. Part memoir, travelogue, history and part detective story, Martin Edmond's latest book is filled with serendipitous moments in such places as an antiquarian bookshop. Bursting with quirky anecdotes Luca Antara is a browser's paradise as Edmond contemplates Australia with wry precision and luminous prose.
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- Independent Weekly
"I'm a huge fan of Martin Edmond. All of his books are about books. Luca Antara is rich and interesting and beautifully crafted. It's absolutely gripping, it's fabulous. It's a genre bending book!
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20070125-1030-Best_Books_of_2006-064.mp3"
- Radio NZ - Laura Kroetsch
"The past is more mysterious than we presently know, and it's good to see the unconstrained intelligence, whatever eyebrows it may raise, channeled by such a compelling narrator."
- Dominion Post - NZ
"This is one of the more intriguing books to come out of Australia during the last year...The characters breathe new life into history's bones."
- The Press - New Zealand
"..a book rich in ideas, at once erudite and eclectic, and full of beautifully unexpected and evocative descriptions…This is back-packing for the mind, a trip full of remarkable sights.
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- The Canberra Times
"Martin Edmond quotes Mark Twain's well-worn `beautiful lies' remark about Australian history to suggest the way we should read his book, a long conversation about quests and origins, about the intersections of personal and social history, about literature and the nature of truth.…Edmond's book evolves as an entertaining, erudite tale, with snippets of history and literary discussion as well as Edmond's somewhat salacious youthful affairs woven into the narrative of his developing love for the history of seafarers in the Pacific and the south."
- Weekend Australian
"Long before Australia was discovered by Europeans, it was imagined in the hearts and souls and minds of rulers, explorers and romantics on the other side of the world. Martin Edmond is a modern-day romantic who embarked on a journey to discover the mystery around Luca Antara, now known as Australia.
This is not a standard historical text, nor strictly a memoir. Edmond has written a magical tale about himself and his obsession with the past."
- The Courier Mail
"The search for the truth of a 17th-century voyage to a mythical Australia becomes a journey into the imagination.
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- Sydney Morning Herald
"Martin Edmond is a genre-busting writer, too hard to pin down to any one category."
- Radio NZ
"...this is the best Australian novel of the last year."
- wet ink magazine
"Luca Antara is a compelling, involving read, a fluid mix of memoir, history, ideas and - presumably - invention all told in crisp and elegant prose. It feels like a book full of tricks, in the nicest possible way."
- New Zealand Listener
"Luca Antara achieves much, challenges on any number of levels, though first and foremost it’s about the writing. Martin Edmond is an undeniably gifted wordsmith for whom words flow with rhythm and grace. Add to this a lack of rancour, an ability to probe below the surface for explanations and a gift for genuine engagement with his readership … he's a masterful story-teller. "
- Ralph Wessman - Walleah Press
"'This account of a sixteenth century Portuguese discovery of Australia takes what might be called a postmodernist approach to supplementing the limited documentary records, something to counterpose to the endless repetitions of the words of The Great God Cook about his experiences in Botany Bay'. Martin Edmond's interweaving of personal memoir and historical documents of highly ambiguous provenance has to be considered creative non-fiction of the highest calibre."
- New Zealand Book Awards 2007 - Judges' Report
"Martin Edmond is drawn to the space between truth and lies...Reading this book is like listening to someone whose companionable, open-ended stories are absorbing yet elusive...one of the many joys of this book is that it challenges your abilities as a reader."
- Daily Telegraph (UK)
"A detective story for bibliophiles, 'Luca Antara' is as much a tale of books lost and found as it is what it purports to be: a history of the origins of Australia."
- The Observer (UK)
"Edmond is a searcher, an investigator of people and events that are open to interpretation. He defines himself as a quest junkie. 'Without quest I become dangerous both to myself and others; without quest I am prey to ennui, self-loathing and worse.' He takes us on a variety of quests in this book, mostly linked to Australia...The book is therefore part autobiography, part history, part travel book and part quest narrative, an unusual combination that nevertheless works. Indeed, Edmond's text is often a pure pleasure to read, full of felicities of style and construction. I enjoyed my time in Edmond's company, not least because of the way he notices minor details and gives them their proper due...Overall I would recommend this book highly for its originality, its imaginative recreation of the past and its prospective impulse. It is full of the 'surprises, and adventures, and incongruities and contradictions, and incredibilities' that Mark Twain noted as being characteristic of Australian history."
- The Literary Review (UK)
"With lyrical understanding, Edmond brings to life both modern and historical Australia via a journey of discovery and ideas. With evocative descriptions, the author discusses quests and origins, the intersections of personal and social history, literature and the nature of truth, and the compulsion to search, dream and travel.
Edmond's wry contemplation of Australia, combined with a unique detective story, is eclectic, humorous, and cock-a-bloc with sharp observations and poignant moments. Original and fantastical, Edmond writes about the discovery of a continent, and its rediscovery through his own eyes. This is a must-read for anyone attempting to understand Australia and its diverse and beautiful culture. [four stars]
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- Australia & New Zealand Magazine
"A spellbinding autobiography and narrative of ideas."
- The Times (UK) (second review)
"The New Zealand-born Edmond settled in Australia in the 1970s and drove a cab while scouring second-hand bookstores for books about Australian history. One of those books is the story of Antonio da Nova, a 17th-century Portuguese servant, sent to discover Luca Antara, as Australia was then known."
- The Globe and Mail, Canada
"On one level, Edmond's curiously ambiguous book might be mistaken for a novel; on another, it is autobiography; on yet another it is literary history..; or it might be, in another shift of the book's tectonic plates, a topography of Australian national culture."
- The Times (UK)
"Martin Edmond, finding himself driving taxis in Sydney and spending his spare time in second-hand bookshops, begins a quest for the history of Australia. His research leads him to Antonio da Nova, the man sent to discover Luca Antara (Australia). As Edmond embarks on his own journey to discover the truth behind da Nova's tale, their lives become intertwined and distinctions between fact and imagination are blurred. A quotation from Twain opens the story: "It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies." Edmond's version of events is described with such passion and insight that one forgets to care whether the story is fact or fiction."
- The Guardian (UK)
"The picture created by Edmond is fascinating and fluidly written.."
- Helene Williams, Historical Novels review (USA)
"...any memoir's agenda may be to present the multifariousness of the self, and where Edmond the protagonist is most vivid is in his evocations of his adopted Australia. Whether describing the "buttery glow" of late sun on "dun-coloured sandstone" or the "red termite mounds leaning like the ruined towers of miniature cities," he's constantly deomstrating that the natural world is as splendiferous as any fable. It's in those moments - in which he imagines, say, his surrogates dumb with wonder at the thousands of pink-mauve jellyfish sailing by "like clouds in the water" - that we feel the affecting complexity of his presence, asserted triumphantly."
- Jim Shepard, The New York Times