Stones of Aran: Labyrinth

Tim Robinson'sStones of Aranis one of the most striking and original literary undertakings of our time. Robinson's ambition is to find out both what it is to know a landscape, know it as extensively and intimately as possible, and what it takes to make that knowledge, the sense of the landscape itself, come alive in writing. It is a project that draws on the legacies of Thoreau and Joyce, to which Robinson brings his own polymathic gifts as cartographer, mathematician, historian, and, above all, shaper of words. InPilgrimageRobinson walked the entire coast of Airann, largest of the Aran islands. InLabyrinthhe turns in to the island's interior. These two booksparts of an inseparable whole that can, for all that, be read quite separately from each otherconstitute a vast polyphonic composition, at once encyclopedic and lyrical, scientific and surprisingly personal. Exploring the illimitable complexity and bounty contained in the seemingly limited confines of a single island, Robinson invites us to look without and within and to see the wonder of the world.

Tim Robinson was brought up in Yorkshire. He studied at Cambridge University and worked as a teacher and artist in Istanbul, Vienna, and London. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands, where he gained fame as a mapmaker. He learned Gaelic and began preserving Irish place-names, gaining respect as an environmentalist and winning a Ford European Conversation Award. NYRB Classics reissued Robinson’s Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage in 2008.