Fauna and Family

Title:

Fauna and Family

More Durrell Family Adventures on Corfu

Author:

Durrell, Gerald

Subject:

Biography & Autobiography

Description:

The inspiration for the PBS Masterpiece series, The Durrells in Corfu: A naturalist's childhood adventures with animals-and humans-on a Greek island. For a passionate animal lover like young Gerald Durrell, the island in the Ionian Sea was a natural paradise, teeming with strange birds and beasts. As he writes ... "To me, this blue kingdom was a treasure house of strange beasts which I longed to collect and observe, and at first it was frustrating for I could only peck along the shoreline like some forlorn seabird, capturing the small fry in the shallows and occasionally being tantalized by something mysterious and wonderful cast up on the shore. But then I got my boat, the good ship Bootle Bumtrinket, and so the whole of this kingdom was opened up for me, from the golden red castles of rock and their deep pools and underwater caves in the north to the long, glittering white sand dunes lying like snowdrifts in the south." The final entry in Durrell's Corfu Trilogy, Fauna and Family shows what life was like for a child in a different time and a different culture just before World War II. It also sheds light on the man who would one day become an iconic wildlife preservationist. Previously published as The Garden of the Gods.

Publisher:

David R. Godine, Publisher

Date:

2011-05-01

Digital Format:

HOOPLA E BOOK

Summary

The inspiration for the PBS Masterpiece series, The Durrells in Corfu : A naturalist's childhood adventures with animals--and humans--on a Greek island.

For a passionate animal lover like young Gerald Durrell, the island in the Ionian Sea was a natural paradise, teeming with strange birds and beasts. As he writes . . .

"To me, this blue kingdom was a treasure house of strange beasts which I longed to collect and observe, and at first it was frustrating for I could only peck along the shoreline like some forlorn seabird, capturing the small fry in the shallows and occasionally being tantalized by something mysterious and wonderful cast up on the shore. But then I got my boat, the good ship Bootle Bumtrinket, and so the whole of this kingdom was opened up for me, from the golden red castles of rock and their deep pools and underwater caves in the north to the long, glittering white sand dunes lying like snowdrifts in the south."

The final entry in Durrell's Corfu Trilogy, Fauna and Family shows what life was like for a child in a different time and a different culture just before World War II. It also sheds light on the man who would one day become an iconic wildlife preservationist.

Previously published as The Garden of the Gods

"[Durrell's] writing is nimble, witty and irreverent, warm but not remotely sentimental." -- Los Angeles Times

Author Notes

Gerald Durrell was born on January 7, 1925 in Jamshedpur, India to British parents. After the death of his father in 1928, the family lived in England and Europe before settling in Corfu, where he spent much of his childhood. Educated by private tutors, he became interested in natural history and amassed a private collection of dozens of creatures from scorpions to owls. He went on numerous wildlife expeditions and founded the Jersey Zoological Park and the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust with the purpose of breeding endangered species.

His first book, The Overloaded Ark, was published in 1953. He wrote 37 books during his lifetime including My Family and Other Animals, The Bafut Beagles, A Zoo in My Luggage, Rosy Is My Relative, and The Mockery Bird. He received the Order of the British Empire in 1982 and was featured in the United Nations' Roll of Honor for Environmental Achievement in 1988. He died from complications related to a liver transplant on January 30, 1995 at the age of 70.

(Bowker Author Biography)