A High Wind in Jamaica (New York Review of Books Classics Series)

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1999 Paperback Ex-library book in good condition with typical stamps and markings. Pages are clean and the binding is tight. *NOTE* Stock photo may not represent the actual book ... for sale. Read more Show Less

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1999 Paperback The cover may contain minor wear, and the corners may have some light degree of damage. If there are any notes present, they would only be penciled and only ... visible on a few pages. There are no ink markings of any kind, but there may be a remainder-mark on the outside edge of the pages. Proceeds benefit non-profit Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties. We create solutions to poverty through the businesses we operate. Your purchase creates jobs and transforms liv. Read more Show Less

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1999-09-30 Paperback Very Good This book is in excellent condition with tight solid pages and binding. Pages are clean and bright. No names, remainder mark, no stickers. Slight ... to no wear to book. Ship carefully in bubble envelopes. Will ship expedited or 2 day mail. Read more Show Less

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1999 Trade paperback New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 296 p.

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More About This Book

Overview

Richard Hughes's celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.

New edition of a classic adventure novel and one of the most startling, highly praised stories in English literature.

Editorial Reviews

Children's Literature
In this re-released classic, Hughes spins the tale of five children forced to survive without adult supervision and the occurrences that befall them in the subsequent time. After a cataclysmic hurricane hits Jamaica, the Bas-Thornton children, along with their Creole friends the Fernandez children, get aboard a ship to England without their parents. No sooner do they set sale, then pirates overtake the ship! Thus follows their episodic-like adventures aboard the pirate ship. This is a beautifully written story complete with vivid descriptions of Jamaica and, later, life at sea; however it is not for the reader with a wandering mind or short attention span. Such readers will find themselves lost in the descriptions and forgetting what is going on in the story. Psychoanalytically, Hughes delves into the topic of the child mind and what happens when children are left, at a young age, to make decisions for themselves. The idea itself proves to be disconcerting at times as the children, far from civilization, exhibit more primal instincts and the story is threaded with undercurrents of evil and amorality. Though the story itself is told through the eyes of the children, it is clearly written for older teens and adults. This would make a wonderful literary addition to a high school classroom, as it is chock-full of discussion topics and the exploration into the child's mind and the idea of morality as a learned skill, rather than a basic instinct. Reviewer: Jeanna Sciarrotta
Ford Madox Ford
There used to hang on the walls of country public houses and farm labourer's cottages a lithograph that, seen from close quarters, represented two innocent children against the light on a balcony beneath an arched window. When you receded from it you saw that in truth it showed as a skull, with crossbones complete beneath. Mr. Hughes book is that lithograph come to life in another art.
More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews
Joyce Carol Oates
[An] eerie, magical, and now unfortunately little-read tale of middle-class English children on a ship, bound for England....A High Wind in Jamaica is part fairy tale, part horror parable...
Rebecca West
A hot draught of mad, primal fantasy and poetry.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780940322158
  • Publisher: New York Review Books
  • Publication date: 9/28/1999
  • Pages: 279
  • Sales rank: 135,981
  • Series: New York Review Books Classics Series , #2
  • Product dimensions: 4.98 (w) x 7.98 (h) x 0.76 (d)

Meet the Author

Richard Hughes (1900-1976) was born in Surrey, England, but his ancestors came from Wales and he considered himself a Welshman. After an early childhood marked by the deaths of two older siblings and his father (his mother then went to work as a magazine journalist), Hughes attended boarding school and, with every expectation of being sent to fight in the First World War, enrolled in the military. Armistice was declared, however, before he could see active service, and Hughes was free to go to Oxford, where he became a star on the university literary scene, with a book of poems in print and a play produced in the West End by the time he graduated in 1922. Hughes’s first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica, came out in 1928 and was a best seller in the United Kingdom and America. In Hazard followed ten years later. Hughes also wrote stories for children and radio plays, but his final major undertaking was the “The Human Predicament”, an ambitious amalgamation of fact and fiction that would track the German and English branches of a single family into the disaster of the Second World War while offering a dramatic depiction of Hitler’s rise to power. The work was planned as a trilogy, but remained incomplete at the time of Hughes’s death. The first volume, The Fox in the Attic, appeared in 1960, to great critical acclaim; volume two, The Wooden Shepherdess, was published in 1973. All of Hughes’s completed novels are available from NYRB Classics.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 14 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 14 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted June 29, 2005

    Overrated

    Having read many reviews before reading the book my expectations were very high. After reading the book I wonder why it received such high marks. Hughes' style of writting can be confusing and hard to follow. However, his descriptions of the physcial world are great and depiction of thoughts and motives of characters is wonderful. The tale's end is what turned out exceedingly shocking. Till the very end I was expecting a moment where the guilty character would 'come clean' or something would happen to set everything 'right'. The travesty of justice that ends the book left me with a very fowl taste for the book and the author. It's not a terrible book, but it's not something I would recommend to anyone to whom I wanted to remains friends.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 24, 2002

    AN OKAY BOOK

    Based on the reviews, I thought I would enjoy this more. While I liked the children in the story and the story itself, when I got done with it, I was left kind of feeling like 'so what?'! So, while I wouldn't highly recommend this book, I wouldn't tell someone not to read it either.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted December 28, 2009

    A fantastical glimpse into another time and place...

    I wasn't sure what to expect from this novel but came away from it feeling like I just got to read a pirate's tale for grown-ups...

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  • Posted October 3, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Not a thrilling high seas adventure

    When I heard the story on NPR about this book I was very, very excited and could not wait to bring this book into my book club. I have however since, read the book and was truly disappointed. The radio article hyped this story as being about the children who were captured by pirates and end up being more cruel then the pirates. The actual book was about children, inadvertently captured by pirates, followed by series of mishaps that can happen to children put into an exotic and sometimes hysterical state. I kept reading and reading hoping that with the turn of a page the story could only get better. I do think this book could be a good discussion topic for a group to review, only to gather the different opinions.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 13, 2006

    Insightful, but flawed

    The way the children just accept changes and don't think too deeply about some matters will remind you that children can be 'innocents' in the world. A a couple facts (about brother John and the parents) are not believable. It is a swashbuckling tale, and the children are swept into the adventure. The book leaves the reader with some points to debate, and that makes it a better read.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 10, 2003

    A WONDERFUL SWASHBUCKLING TALE!

    I am so happy to see this wonderful classic back in print! It is about the children of a group of white Jamaican planters who are shipped off to boarding school in England. The youngest is 6, if I remember correctly, so they are all somewhat traumatized at leaving their parents and homes to sail to the unknown. And their ship is attacked and captured by pirates!!! They are scared to death, but find the pirates treating them rather humanely. This is a must read for everyone and should be on every school library's shelves.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted November 16, 2000

    a wonderful book

    i found this book last summer among the heaps the discarded books in the basement of our public library. it's spine was cracked in half and it's pages yellow--but what a wonderful book it turned out to be! i'm glad to see it's been printed again. please read this book.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 15, 2000

    Bait and Switch?

    A true classic, not a minor classic. The quintessential tale of lost innosence. A collectors' book. All of that said>>I bought this new nyrb book with a different cover? Online, to send it as gift, I see the 'new' nyrb classic is new again>>so much for a timeless handsome collection. I am not buying this one. Bait and Switch? I bet the reviewer below is back to his first impressions! How do I find the first new version?

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    Posted May 7, 2011

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    Posted December 28, 2010

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    Posted April 25, 2011

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    Posted December 5, 2010

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