Bücher von James Rebanks

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'Affectionate, evocative, illuminating. A story of survival - of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life. I love this book' Nigel Slater'Triumphant, a pastoral for the 21st century' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 'The nature publishing sensation of the year, unsentimental yet luminous' Melissa Harrison, The Times, Books of the YearSome people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the fells.

The author of the beloved No.1 bestseller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm'I can't imagine anyone starting to read English Pastoral and not being eager to read it all at once, as I did, and not being moved by the life and the landscape Rebanks describes so well. I was thrilled by it' Philip Pullman As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognisable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. English Pastoral is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against all the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.

Der Spiegel Bestseller des englischen Schäfers der zum Internet-Star wurdeJames Rebanks' Familie lebt seit Generationen im englischen Hochland, dem Lake District. Die Lebensweise ist seit Jahrhunderten von den Jahreszeiten und Arbeitsabläufen bestimmt. Im Sommer werden die Schafe auf die kahlen Berge getrieben und das Heu geerntet; im Herbst folgen die Messen, wo die Herden aufgestockt werden, im Winter die Anstrengung, dass die Schafe am Leben bleiben, und die Erleichterung, die mit dem Frühling kommt, wenn die Lämmer geboren werden und die Tiere wieder in die Berge getrieben werden.James Rebanks erzählt von einer archaischen Landschaft, von einer tiefen Verwurzelung an einen Ort. In eindrucksvoll klarer Prosa schildert er den Jahresablauf eines Hirten, bietet uns einen einzigartigen Einblick in das ländliche Leben. Er schreibt auch von den Menschen, die ihm nahestehen, Menschen mit großer Beharrlichkeit, obwohl sich die Welt um sie herum vollständig verändert hat. "Mein Leben als Schäfer" ist Spiegel Bestseller und schaffte es auf Platz eins der englischen Bestsellerliste, die "Sunday Times" nennt ihn das "Memoir des Jahres".»Die Schafzucht kann ganz schön hart sein. Dass man sie aber auch in poetische und spannende Geschichten packen kann, zeigt Englands Bestellerautor James Rebanks.« annabelle»Der gute Hirte, ein Bild des Vertrauens, das wir verstehen - gleich, ob wir in England, Ostfriesland, in Israel oder Tansania leben.« NDR