Try Not to Be Strange
The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2023 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize
On his fifteenth birthday, in the summer of 1880, future science-fiction writer M.P. Shiel sailed with his father and the local bishop from their home in the Caribbean out to the nearby island of Redonda—where, with pomp and circumstance, he was declared the island’s king. A few years later, when Shiel set sail for a new life in London, his father gave him some advice: Try not to be strange. It was almost as if the elder Shiel knew what was coming.
Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda tells, for the first time, the complete history of Redonda’s transformation from an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. With a cast of characters including forgotten sci-fi novelists, alcoholic poets, vegetarian publishers, Nobel Prize frontrunners, and the bartenders who kept them all lubricated while angling for the throne themselves, Michael Hingston details the friendships, feuds, and fantasies that fueled the creation of one of the oddest and most enduring micronations ever dreamt into being. Part literary history, part travelogue, part quest narrative, this cautionary tale about what happens when bibliomania escapes the shelves and stacks is as charming as it is peculiar—and blurs the line between reality and fantasy so thoroughly that it may never be entirely restored.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Hingston (The Dilettantes) paints a richly textured portrait of the uninhabited Caribbean island of Redonda and its unlikely status as a "micronation" ruled by a succession of literary figures. Claimed by the British in 1869, the island was valued for its "thick layers of guano," which contained phosphates used in the manufacture of fertilizers and gunpowder. Hingston became interested in the island after a "chance encounter" with Javier Marías's 1989 novel All Souls, which includes a reference to British poet John Gawsworth as heir "to something called the Kingdom of Redonda." From there, Hingston traces the legend of Redonda back to 19th-century science fiction author M.P. Shiel, who claimed that, on his 15th birthday, his father and a local bishop brought him from nearby Montserrat to Redonda and declared him the island's king. Hingston also delves into Shiel's best-known novel, The Purple Cloud, which predicted the end of the world via poison cloud, and documents his collaboration with the "eccentric but troubled" Gawsworth and the convoluted succession plan they developed to ensure that "the Redondan legend would live on." Full of colorful personalities, exotic locales, and unexpected twists, this is a jaunty historical footnote.