Book description
The Long Field burrows deep into the Welsh countryside to tell how this small country became a big part of an American writer's life. Petro, author of Travels in an Old Tongue, twines her story around that of Wales by viewing both through the lens of hiraeth, a quintessential Welsh…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Long Field as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I loved the way Pamela Petro engages with, and understands, Cymraeg. She is American and studied in Cymru/Wales, learning the language as she went along. She really gets the animistic nature of Cymraeg, the way it is intimately bound to place and nature. Her exposition of words like hiraeth and cynefin is the best that I have found, and I learned so much from the book.
When Pamela Petro traveled to Lampeter, Wales for the first time to enroll in a year-long master’s degree program, she had no idea that the open vista of sheep pastures and low hills around the town would strike a chord in her—she found herself nodding as if she was in agreement with the landscape—or that she would spend the rest of her life returning to Wales from the various American cities where she made a life as a writer and a teacher. The Long Field takes us on a journey through time and ideas as well as of places.
The…
From Kyoko's list on travel memoirs for those who love to wander.
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