Bøger af James Rebanks

Nogle mennesker har frihed til at vælge deres egen vej i livet. Det gjaldt ikke for James Rebanks. Han er fåreopdrætter på en gård i Lake District i England, der har været i familiens eje i mere end seks århundreder. James Rebanks bog, The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District, er allerede en stor succes hos både anmeldere og læsere. Hans skildringer af livet som fårebonde er både engagerende, rørende og ærlige. I en stemningsmættet tekst guider Rebanks os gennem et får-år. Bogen er en unik fortælling om livet på landet – et liv, som er fjernt for de fleste af os. Det er en historie om Rebanks arbejdsliv og menneskene omkring ham, hans barndom, hans forældre og bedsteforældre. Det er historien om at være vedholdende på trods af et vanskeligt erhverv, og den er fortalt med stor kærlighed til naturen. For Rebanks og hans familie danner vejret og årstiderne de altafgørende rammer om livet. Om sommeren er fårene på bjerget og høet i laden, om efteråret går man på markedet og bringer nye dyr til besætningen, om vinteren skal dyrene holdes i live, og med foråret kommer nye lam.

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.

Nogle mennesker har frihed til at vælge deres egen vej i livet. Det gjaldt ikke for James Rebanks. Han er fåreopdrætter på en gård i Lake District i England, der har været i familiens eje i mere end seks århundreder.James Rebanks bog, The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District, er allerede en stor succes hos både anmeldere og læsere. Hans skildringer af livet som fårebonde er både engagerende, rørende og ærlige. I en stemningsmættet tekst guider Rebanks os gennem et får-år. Bogen er en unik fortælling om livet på landet – et liv, som er fjernt for de fleste af os. Det er en historie om Rebanks arbejdsliv og menneskene omkring ham, hans barndom, hans forældre og bedsteforældre. Det er historien om at være vedholdende på trods af et vanskeligt erhverv, og den er fortalt med stor kærlighed til naturen.For Rebanks og hans familie danner vejret og årstiderne de altafgørende rammer om livet. Om sommeren er fårene på bjerget og høet i laden, om efteråret går man på markedet og bringer nye dyr til besætningen, om vinteren skal dyrene holdes i live, og med foråret kommer nye lam.

Da James Rebanks var dreng, lærte hans farfar ham at arbejde med jorden og dyrene på den gamle måde. Deres slægtsgård i Lake District var en del af et ældgammelt landbrugsland: et virvar af afgrøder og engdrag, græsgange med får, køer og heste og læhegn, der myldrede af naturens liv. Men da James arvede gården, var den næsten ikke til at genkende. Der var ikke længere folk, som arbejdede ude på marken, de gamle kampestensgårde var i forfald, og himlen var stille – fuglene og deres sang var forsvundet.Vores fælles arv er beretningen om, hvordan landbrugsland i hele verden er på randen af kollaps, og hvordan gamle og gennemprøvede metoder, formet af arbejde, vejr, fællesskaber og vild natur, er gået tabt. Og om en enkelt bonde, som bruger sin viden om fortiden til at prøve at redde det lille hjørne af England, der nu er hans, og efterlade sig en arv til kommende generationer.Det er en bog om, hvad det vil sige at elske og ære et sted, og om hvordan det måske, mod alle odds, stadig er muligt at opbygge et bæredygtigt landbrug i pagt med naturen.Man behøver ikke være hverken fåre-entusiast, landmand eller gå ind for radikal naturfredning for at finde bogen vedkommende.

We are all in need of lights to follow. One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. Back at home, Rebanks couldn't stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly - and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, building little wooden huts that will protect the ducks come spring; to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for the woman to gather, like feathered gold. Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not at all what he had previously thought. As the weeks pass, what began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.