Time Song
Searching for Doggerland
Published on 10. February 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-78470-490-2 (ISBN)
Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE
A journey told through stories and songs into Doggerland, the ancient region that once joined the east coast of England to Holland
Time Song tells of the creation, the existence and the loss of a country now called Doggerland, a huge and fertile area that once connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC.
Julia Blackburn mixes fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen 'songs' and all sorts of stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of this vanished land. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream...
'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator
'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley
A journey told through stories and songs into Doggerland, the ancient region that once joined the east coast of England to Holland
Time Song tells of the creation, the existence and the loss of a country now called Doggerland, a huge and fertile area that once connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC.
Julia Blackburn mixes fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen 'songs' and all sorts of stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of this vanished land. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream...
'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator
'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley
Reviews / Votes
A poetic and fascinating exploration of life on Doggerland... This is one of the only books I've ever read that has made me feel better about climate change. * Guardian *Book of the Week* * A magical, mesmerising book - a book which makes you feel giddy at the thought of the deep gulf of history hidden just beneath your feet. * Scotsman * Breathtaking... [a] splendidly rich book... I admire the intelligence, the appetite for discovery and the shining imagination that have gone into [Time Song]. * Literary Review * Julia Blackburn's marvellous Time Song: Searching for Doggerland...is startling, funny and often very moving. -- Simon Winder * New Statesman, *Books of the Year* * [Time Song] is time travel... wonderful. * Observer * Rarely have I read a book in which there is such an entrancingly liquid and easy drift between the metaphorical and the actual... This is not science or history (there are enough books like that) but understanding - so that in [Blackburn's] hands the ancient Doggerland landscape of distant summers becomes filled again... This book is a wonder. * Spectator * Time Song is not a straightforward book about Doggerland. It is much more interesting than that... Time Song is richly peopled, Blackburn's unflagging curiosity and sharp eye bringing a diverse cast of characters vividly to life. She sifts their stories not just for information, but for meaning; she's conjuring for us not merely the facts of Doggerland, but the weight of its omission from our history books, our collective memory and our imaginations. * Financial Times * One of my favourite writers in the whole world is Julia Blackburn and she has produced yet another uncategorisable masterpiece which is Time Song... [Blackburn] is one of our great original writers... [Time Song] is a beautiful, beautiful book. * Backlisted Podcast * There are many beauties to be found in Blackburn's writing, particularly when she turns an observant eye on landscapes and the evidence they provide of the prehistoric peoples who inhabited them. * The Times * Majestic... The genius of Time Song is that the diverse form of the book subtly suggests that narratives may not be continuous... [this] book on the past is above all a response to the urgent problems of the present. * Times Literary Supplement *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Dimensions
Height: 208 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
644 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78470-490-2 (9781784704902)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
02/2019
Vintage Digital
€11.99
Available for download
Person
Julia Blackburn has written a number of books of non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Time Song was shortlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize, Threads won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award and the New Angle Prize, Thin Paths was shortlisted for the Costa Prize for Biography, and The Three of Us won the J.R. Ackerley Award. Her two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions, were both shortlisted for the Women's Prize. She lives in Suffolk and Italy.