The Shan states had for centuries staged periodic uprisings against Burmese rule.

These were the small principalities of the Shan people, Thais who until the 16th century had ruled much of Burma. The threat to British rule of Franco-Burmese cooperation was compounded by local insurgency in the Shan states. After the Anglo-Burmese wars of the 1820s and 50s, in which the British took large amounts of territory, the Burmese signed a commercial treaty with France. Frequent, detailed history lessons are interspersed in the narrative to make this violent legacy clear. His CV, indeed, is a publicist's dream: he's a young American medical student with a biology degree from Harvard, who has been studying malaria on the Thai-Burmese border and in north-east Burma, and wrote his novel 'between lessons at medical school'.įor The Piano Tuner, he's become engrossed in the complex and bloody power-struggles of Burma in the 1880s, when the British were consolidating their empire. Daniel Mason knows the place and the history well. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another.These surreal moments are grounded in the real history and politics of 19th-century British-dominated Burma. This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave-only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.

A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. Klappentext zu „North Woods “ A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries-a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason