Alistair MacLeod Libros

"Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, these stories are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart. Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, they celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition in the face of love and loss."

Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his people: loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever linked to their clan. There is the legendary patriarch who left the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and resettled in “the land of trees,” where his descendents became a separate Nova Scotia clan. There is the team of brothers and cousins, expert miners in demand around the world for their dangerous skills. And there is Alexander and his twin sister, who have left Cape Breton and prospered, yet are haunted by the past. Elegiac, hypnotic, by turns joyful and sad, No Great Mischief is a spellbinding story of family, loyalty, exile, and of the blood ties that bind us, generations later, to the land from which our ancestors came.

Penelope Wain believes that her lover, Neil Macrae, has been killed while serving overseas under her father. That he died apparently in disgrace does not alter her love for him, even though her father is insistent on his guilt. What neither Penelope or her father knows is that Neil is not dead, but has returned to Halifax to clear his name. Hugh MacLennan’s first novel is a compelling romance set against the horrors of wartime and the catastrophic Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.

The story is simple, seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. As an adult he remembers the way things were back home on the farm on the west coast of Cape Breton. The time was the 1940s, but the hens and the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the horse made it seem ancient. The family of six children excitedly waits for Christmas and two-year-old Kenneth, who liked Halloween a lot, asks, “Who are you going to dress up as at Christmas? I think I’ll be a snowman.” They wait especially for their oldest brother, Neil, working on “the Lake boats” in Ontario, who sends intriguing packages of “clothes” back for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he arrives, to the delight of his young siblings, and shoes the horse before taking them by sleigh through the woods to the nearby church. The adults, including the narrator for the first time, sit up late to play the gift-wrapping role of Santa Claus.The story is simple, short and sweet, but with a foretaste of sorrow. Not a word is out of place. Matching and enhancingthe text are black and white illustrations by Peter Rankin, making this book a perfect little gift.For readers from nine to ninety-nine, our classic Christmas story by one of our greatest writers.

Von den frühen Menschen, die Afrika verließen, bis zum ersten Flug ins All - das Verlangen, Unbekanntes zu erforschen, trug entscheidend zum Fortschritt der Menschheit bei. Eine Fülle an Beweggründen trieb die Menschen dabei an: Handelsinteressen, Eroberungsdrang, wissenschaftliche Neugier, missionarischer Eifer oder die Sehnsucht nach Abenteuer, Ruhm und Grenzsituationen. In dieser Kombination aus reich bebildertem Nachschlagewerk und spannender Abenteuerreportage werden über 80 der größten Entdecker, Pioniere und Abenteurer der Weltgeschichte vorgestellt: von Alexander dem Großen über Marco Polo, Christoph Kolumbus und Alexander von Humboldt bis zu Jacques Cousteau oder Neil Armstrong. Persönliche Zeugnisse und „Fotoreportagen“ zu den Lebensbedingungen auf den einzelnen Expeditionen ermöglichen Einblicke in längst vergangene Zeiten. Spannende Schilderungen machen ihre Reisen lebendig, anhand übersichtlicher Karten lassen sich die Expeditionsrouten nachvollziehen. Umfangreiche Hintergrundinformationen zum Wissenstand und der Weltsicht der jeweiligen Epoche stellen die Leistungen der Entdecker in einen breiteren Zusammenhang und machen es möglich sie richtig einzuordnen. Mit mehr als 1.000 Fotografien, Abbildungen und Karten, darunter auch Bilddokumente aus den Archiven der Royal Geographical Society!