Product Description

A journey of 6,000 miles across two continents and fourteen countries is nothing to swallows: they do it twice a year. But for a writer and birdwatcher, this is the expedition of a lifetime. By trains, cars, buses, motorbikes, trucks, canoes, planes, one camel and three ships, Horatio Clare followed migrating swallows (Hirundo rustica) from reed beds outside Bloemfontein, where millions roost in February, to a barn in Wales, where a pair nest in May. From the slums of Cape Town to the palaces of Algiers, through Pygmy villages where pineapples grow wild, to the Gulf of Guinea where the sea blazes with oil flares, "A Single Swallow" is a journey through the modern world to the tune of an ancient rhythm.It is a story of old empires and modern tribes, of the horrors of power and the wonders of kindness. It includes a witch-doctor's recipe for stewed swallow, explains how to travel without money or a passport, describes a terrifying incident involving three Spanish soldiers and a tiny orange dog, betrays several swallow secrets and proves that Wales exists only because of Ryan Giggs. It also tests the wisdom of an ancient piece of hearsay: the Zulus say that those who follow the swallows never come back ...Magical, inspiring, beautifully written with passion and purpose, "A Single Swallow" is a thrilling book about the intersection of the natural and the human worlds, sending shivers down the spine and lifting the heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8700 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Review
'Fine lyrical writing and a gift for inventive, unexpected metaphor. A brave, modern, multicultural and open-hearted approach to travel itself' --Guardian

Review
`Clare has produced an enthusiastic, often elegiac, chronicle of his encounters with the swallows'

Review
`A gifted and lyrical travel writer, good at making contact with all sorts of people. A sensitive and intelligent observer'

Customer Reviews

wondrous
This book is a wonderful account of the journey of a swallow throughout its migration. I am completely in awe of how this little bird can fly so far. All the countries it flies over and to are discussed in a brilliant narrative. Buy it! Then next time you see a swallow arrive in the spring imagine its journey and be amazed.

A superb and honest account of one man's journey through Africa, Spain and France
A modern day Laurie Lee - but with more grit and honesty. A Single Swallow is many things - part natural history, part journalism, part autobiography. There is spiritual observation and thought, there is romance and there is of course history and geography. The portrait of West Africa is dark, shocking, humorous and beautiful. Clare's ability to be both personal and objective in how he writes and observes, aided by his phemomenal and rhythmic prose, are winning ingredients in this quite brilliant book.

The Journey of a Single Bird.
Swallows have been loved, mythologised and studied by almost all human cultures where they are found. However, it has only been in recent years that the true magnitude of their journey has been understood. From their non-breeding grounds in southern Africa to the summer of the north, where they breed, the journey of the swallow is truly remarkable.

Swallows (technically Barn Swallows) have nested on and in the buildings of the author's Welsh farm for years and when they return in the summer "his swallows" have flown from South Africa back to the farm in about one month. The author's journey takes more or less the same path, and the same time - from South Africa back to his Welsh routes in about one month.

The journey of the Swallows is beset with dangers and random encounters, and along the way they may acquire a mate, survive by good luck rather than skill and find food wherever they can. This is a style of travel embraced by the author, and the book is based not only on the flight path that the Swallows take, but also the people he meets along the way. If the swallows fly from habitat to habitat on the way to Wales to breed, the author moves from relationship to relationship until he too finds his way home to Wales.

Throughout this splendid book there are gems to be found, trains with fewer doors than doorways, the idea that he is not travelling north, but staying in Spring as the world turns, that as we retreat into our world of ear-phoned tunes that only shared music left in Europe is the sound of traffic and that peculiar conceit that there is a fundamental difference between "travel" and "tourism". Each of these short sections would be a high point in any other book, but here they occur regularly.

In the end, it is the final stages of the journey that seem to have the most impact on the author, with his odd behaviour in Gibraltar not really being an advertisement for the benefits of travel! However, it is clear that his life will not be the same after this trip - and it seems clear that the changes he experiences are for the best. While one swallow may not make a summer, it seems that the journey of one swallow can make a new man. Highly recommended.