An edition of The white bone (1998)

The white bone

a novel

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 15, 2024 | History
An edition of The white bone (1998)

The white bone

a novel

  • 23 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading

If, as many recent nonfiction bestsellers have revealed, animals possess emotions and awareness, they must have stories. In The White Bone, a novel imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, the most splendid of nature's creatures, Barbara Gowdy creates a world whole and separate that yet illuminates our own.

For years, young Mud and her family have roamed the high grasses, swamps and deserts of sub-Saharan Africa. Now, however, the earth is scorched by drought, and the mutilated bodies of family and friends lie scattered on the ground, shot down by ivory hunters. Nothing - not the once-familiar terrain, or the age-old rhythms of life or even memory itself - seems reliable anymore.

Yet a slim prophecy of hope is passed on from water hole to water hole: the only chance for survival is the mysterious white hone.

And so, amid scenes of terrifying carnage and despair, begins the quest of Mud and her family for the bone that, legend holds, will point them toward the Safe Place. Their journey takes them through Africa's vast dessicated plains, where they meet with injury and starvation, ruthless poachers and rapacious carnivores, lone nomadic bulls and unexpected allies - until at last the survivors find themselves facing a final, chilling trial of loyalty and courage.

Plunged into an alien arid landscape, we gradually orient ourselves in elephant time, elephant space, elephant consciousness. And we begin to imagine, as Gowdy puts it "what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious memory."

Publish Date
Publisher
Picador USA
Language
English
Pages
330

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Previews available in: English Dutch

Edition Availability
Cover of: The white bone
The white bone
2007, HarperPerennial Canada
in English - Trade pbk. ed.
Cover of: The White Bone
The White Bone
May 2, 2000, Flamingo
Cover of: The white bone
The white bone: a novel
1999, Metropolitan Books
in English - 1st American ed.
Cover of: The white bone
The white bone
1999, HarperPerennialCanada
in English - 1st HarperPerennial ed.
Cover of: De weg naar het water
De weg naar het water
1999, Het Spectrum
in Dutch - 2. druk.
Cover of: The white bone
The white bone: a novel
1998, Picador USA
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Published in
New York
Genre
Fiction.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
813/.54
Library of Congress
PR9199.3.G658 W47 1998, PR9199.3.G658W47

The Physical Object

Pagination
xviii, 330 p. ;
Number of pages
330

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL6780361M
Internet Archive
whitebonenovel00gowd
ISBN 10
0312264127
LCCN
00026149
Library Thing
168893
Goodreads
80966

First Sentence

"All day there are glaring omens that go undetected."

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
July 15, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 17, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
September 29, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 14, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page