Book cover of Voices of the Old Sea

Book description

After World War II, Norman Lewis returned to Spain and settled in the remote fishing village of Farol, on what is now Costa Brava. Voices of the Old Sea describes his three successive summers in that almost medieval community where life revolved around the seasonal sardine catches, Alcade's bar, and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Voices of the Old Sea as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Norman Lewis was what is usually called a travel writer. Today’s travel writers, however, pale beside him.

I read this book when it first came out in 1984. It describes the three summers in the late 1940s when Lewis lived and worked in a very remote fishing village on what is now called the Costa Brava. He records with utmost sympathy and acuteness of observation the last days of the old world of Mediterranean Spain before it became completely obliterated by mass tourism.

The book touched me deeply, for I had seen the last vestiges of other parts of Spain…

From Patrick's list on vanishing human worlds.

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