Book description
Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal
Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize
Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the
mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a
series of events brought her close to the old people of the village
and they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had
been trapped in an archaic feudal system and owned by a local padrone
who demanded his share of all they had, of the eruption of the Second
World War, of the conflict between the fascists and the partisans, of
death and fear and hunger of how they hid like like foxes in the
mountains. 'Write it down for us,' they said, 'because otherwise it
will all be lost.'
Thin Paths is a celebration of the songlines of one place
that could be many places and a celebration of the humour and
determination of the human spirit.
Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction -
Charles Waterton
,
The
Emperor's Last Island
,
Daisy Bates in the Desert
,
Old Man Goya
and
With Billie
- a family memoir,
The Three of Us
, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award, and two novels,
The Book
of Colour
and
The Leper's Companions
, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author
of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a
selection of which were published in
My Animals and Other Family,
and four radio plays, including
The Spellbound Horses
, which was broadcast in 2011.
