Joseph Farrell is Emeritus Professor at the University of Strathclyde. He is a renowned translator from the Italian, whose translations include works by Leonardo Sciascia, Vincenzo Consolo, Dario Fo and Valerio Varesi.
A bracing amalgam of history, biography and travel . . . Farrell
has done his compatriot proud.
*Financial Times.*
Scholarly, engaging and deeply thoughtful, Joseph Farrell's account
of Stevenson's last four years in Samoa has the feel of an instant
classic in studies of the writer. The Navigator Islands had
fascinated Stevenson for years, but when he went to live there in
1890, frail and famous, the realities of life in on the margins of
his own culture, language and society changed him forever. Rarely
can a place and a writer have had so much effect on each other:
Joseph Farrell's brilliant study takes us further into this
fascinating relationship than ever before.
*Claire Harman, author of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography*
Marvellously done, thanks to the lively fair-mindedness of
Farrell's excellent prose. Vivid, scholarly, informative, but above
all a really good read.
*Liz Lochhead, Scots Makar 2011-16*
Joseph Farrell's is the best book I have seen on Stevenson's years
in Samoa, the most enviable of any writer's ever. Farrell is fair
to both his sunburnt Bohemianism and his unremitting hard work.
*James Buchan*
Stevenson in Samoa is very good indeed . . . It is full of interest
and repays the attention it demands.
*Scotsman.*
A sparkling account of the last years of Stevenson's life . . . An
emeritus professor at the University of Strathclyde and translator
of literary works from Italian, Farrell comes armed with
perceptive, elegant prose and a revealing understanding of
Stevenson's peculiarly Scottish frame of mind.
*Literary Review*
A very profound examination of Stevenson's Samoa in light of
current and present ideologies.
*Glasgow Herald.*
Farrell provides a welcome service by offering us the fascinating
story of Stevenson's last great roll with the dice.
*Spectator.*
By adeptly detailing colonial politics in which Stevenson
intervened, Farrell takes us well beyond the image of the romantic
exile in Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa.
*T.L.S.*
A warm and intelligent account of the novelist's life and work in
his last years in the South Seas.
*Catholic Herald Books of the Year*
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