A Luminous History of the Palm

Product Description
Fiction. Short Stories. "This little book can be read as a series of small portraits through time, all of which include a palm tree. Or it can be read as a revolutionary tract. The palm is a symbol traced through history, a hidden portal to intimate moments that bring geographies and situations to life. A vital presence, it coaxes out vitality. It's everywhere once you start to look, a secret joyful emblem. A LUMINOUS HISTORY OF THE PALM would have been very easy to have spent a lifetime writing. Why the palm? Why not? Are abstract categories any better? Run your fingers over the leaves, help the plant to take root, sprinkle the water of your attention on the first story so it grows. Repeat the exercise a couple of dozen times. If you like, go on to create your own history on the basis of other trees, other flowers, other animals. Infinite stories proliferate, yet sprout from the same soil."--Jessica Sequeira
Book Description
A brief history of civilization threaded through the eaves and fronds of the humble palm.
About the Author
Jessica Sequeira has published the novel
A Furious Oyster (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), the collection of stories
Rhombus and Oval (What Books), and the collection of essays
Other Paradises: Poetic Approaches to Thinking in a Technological Age (Zero). She is also an active translator of poetry and prose by Latin American authors, both contemporaries as well as figures such as Winétt de Rokha, Sara Gallardo, and Teresa Wilms Montt, whose playful imaginations remain vital. Currently she lives between Santiago (Chile) and Cambridge (UK), where she is writing a PhD at the Centre of Latin American Studies on literary exchanges between Latin America and India.