A HISTORY OF WATER by Edward Wilson-Lee makes 2023 James Tait Black Biography Prize shortlist

A HISTORY OF WATER, Edward Wilson-Lee’s astonishing biography of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões, has been shortlisted for the illustrious 2023 James Tait Black Biography Prize.

The James Tait Black Prizes are the longest-running literary prizes in Britain, with two prizes in total – one for fiction and one for biography.

The other titles shortlisted for this year’s biography prize are: HOMESICK by Jennifer Croft; A LINE IN THE WORLD: A YEAR ON THE NORTH SEA COAST by Dorthe Nors, translated from Danish by Caroline Waight; and COME BACK IN SEPTEMBER: A LITERARY EDUCATION ON WEST SIXTY-SEVENTH STREET, MANHATTEN by Darryl Pinckney.

The titles shortlisted for this year’s fiction prize are as follows: BITTER ORANGE TREE by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver; BOLLA by Pajtim Statovci, translated from Finnish by David Hackston; and AFTER SAPPHO by Selby Wynn Schwartz.

On this year’s biography shortlist, judge Dr Simon Cooke comments: ‘Absorbing, resonantly voiced, and beautifully realised, these life-writings open fascinating and various worlds, and searchingly inquire into the transformative relations between literature and life.’

The winners of both prizes will be announced by the University of Edinburgh in July. Past winners of the biography prize include the likes of Martin Amis, Claire Tomalin and Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

A Times Literary Supplement ‘Book of the Year’ as well as one of The Times ‘Best History Books of 2022’,  A HISTORY OF WATER follows the interconnected lives of two men across the renaissance globe. One of them, Damião de Góis – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returned home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to lock himself in the Torre de Tombo, the first great national archive of Europe, before dying in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other, Luís de Camões – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up becoming the national poet of Portugal.

The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. In vividly charting those struggles, Edward Wilson-Lee resurrects de Góis’ fluid and dynamic vision of history. A history whose currents endlessly rise up and converge, turbulent, sonorous, and powerful.

A HISTORY OF WATER was first published to great acclaim in hardback by William Collins in August 2022, and the paperback edition will be published in August this year.

About Edward Wilson-Lee

Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between.

His previous books SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND and THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS have been widely acclaimed, published in the UK and US, and translated into 11 languages.

Praise for A HISTORY OF WATER

‘A very few times in the course of a reader's life a book appears that shatters one's assumptions about how and why things came to pass. A HISTORY OF WATER is one such book. A mind-blowing achievement.’ – Alberto Manguel

‘This book is itself something of a wonder: beautifully written and utterly mesmerising. I loved every page.’ – Jessie Childs, The Sunday Times

‘A wonderful – and wonder-full – recreation of a crucial episode in European history… The book also has a rare beauty; written with elegant restraint, its every page is rich in numinous sense of vanishings and misunderstandings, gaps in the records, marvels and mysteries… hauntingly vivid’ – Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph

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EDWARD WILSON-LEE’S THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS WINS THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 2019

Edward Wilson-Lee’s marvellous THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS has won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2019. The prize celebrates the best non-fiction books with specifically historical content and of high literary merit – that is, not primarily written for the academic market.

THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS was published by William Collins in the UK in 2018 and by Scribner in the US in 2019. Rights have been sold in eight translation markets so far: Bulgaria (Colibri), China (Guangxi Normal University Press), France (Editions Paulsen), Germany (Btb Verlag), Italy (Bollati Boringhieri), Japan (Kashiwashobo), Saudi Arabia (Madarek) and Spain (Ariel, Planeta). THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography in 2019.

Without libraries, who are we? We have no past, and no future… THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS tells for the first time in English the story of the first great universal library in the age of printing — and of Hernando Colon, the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus, who created it. Hernando spent his life trying to build the first universal library of print: personally scouring bookshops in an attempt to acquire a copy of every book, he brought them back to his library in Seville, where he drove himself mad attempting to devise how best to navigate and organise the world of print.

Hernando lived in extraordinary times. He knew Erasmus, Dürer and Thomas More, was at the forefront in the first international conference to determine the circumference of the world, led the team that created the first world map on scientific principles — and invented the modern bookcase. Hernando’s life placed him at the centre of the ages of exploration, print, and the Reformation: he spent a year living with his father marooned aboard a shipwrecked hull off Jamaica and wrote the first biography of Columbus. To reconstruct his life is not only to recover a vision of the Renaissance world, but also to appreciate the passions and intrigues that lie beneath our own disciplined attempts to bring order to the world. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an unforgettable journey through these layered realities — and a bibliophile’s dream!

Praise for Edward Wilson-Lee and THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS
‘Perfectly pitched poetic drama — the closest thing documented history can get to magic realism…THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is a wonderful book, not least in the literal sense of an epic unfolding in a nonstop procession of marvels, ordeals and apparitions… A simile-studded prose that is seldom less than elegant and often quite beautiful… THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is most compelling as a meditation on the response to an explosive expansion of knowledge.’ —  Simon Schama, Financial Times

'Wilson-Lee’s main subject… is an intellectual hunger at once dazzling and monstrous: Hernando Colon’s insatiable urge to know and to possess… For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page… THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an intellectual biography, but its beating heart is the tangled love of a son for his father... Edward Wilson-Lee’s magnificent book helps us understand [Hernando’s] obsessive desire to gather and preserve, even in the face of chaos.'  — Irina Dumitrescu, New York Times

'Superb biography... THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS affords an intriguing glimpse into the Renaissance mind and its rage for order, as well as a beguiling preview of the modern library and, very possibly, what lies beyond.' — Ernest Hilbert, Wall Street Journal

‘An elegantly written, absorbing portrait of a visionary man and his age.’ — Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

'A gripping study of heroic endeavour and family rivalry; it's a tour de force of sifting through dusty fragments and of vivid biographical storytelling, as well as a delicious, Borgesian dream for all bookworms and lovers of libraries and print ephemera.' — Marina Warner, New Statesman

‘Edward Wilson-Lee’s THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an utter joy, the story of the first internationally important library and the man whose vision it was. It will remind everyone who reads of it of how wonderful libraries and the people who work in them are.’ – Joseph O’Connor, Irish Times

About the Author
Raised in Kenya, in a family of wildlife conservationists and filmmakers, Edward Wilson-Lee went to school in Switzerland, then to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, with periods living in New Orleans and Mexico in between. He now teaches medieval and Renaissance literature at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he has won prestigious research grants. His wife is an American scholar and writer, and they visit the US regularly. He is writing his next book for William Collins.

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THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS BY EDWARD WILSON-LEE OUT NOW

Discover the vibrant life of Hernando Colón, Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son in Edward Wilson-Lee’s illuminating new biography THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS out now from William Collins in hardback, ebook and audio. Helen Castor called it ‘a thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which we acquire, organise and retrieve information about the world and our place in it.’  In Literary Review Felipe Fernández-Armesto described the book as ‘a fascinating and beautifully written account of how Hernando conceived and assembled his library is set within a highly original biography of the compiler. It’s a work of imagination restrained by respect for evidence, of brilliance suitably alloyed by erudition, and of scholarship enlivened by sensitivity and acuity.’ You can also read Alison Flood’s Guardian feature on Edward and the book here

Without libraries, who are we? We have no past, and no future… This fascinating book tells for the first time in English the story of the first great universal library in the age of printing — and of the illegitimate son of Christopher Colombus who created it. Hernando Colón spent his life trying to build the first universal library of print: personally scouring bookshops in an attempt to acquire a copy of every book, he brought them back to his library in Seville, where he drove himself mad attempting to devise how best to navigate and organise the world of print.

Hernando lived in extraordinary times. He knew Erasmus, Dürer and Thomas More, was at the forefront in the first international conference to determine the circumference of the world, led the team that created the first world map on scientific principles — and invented the modern bookcase!

Hernando’s life placed him at the centre of the ages of exploration, print, and the Reformation: he spent a year living with his father marooned aboard a shipwrecked hull off Jamaica and wrote the first biography of Columbus. To reconstruct his life is not only to recover a vision of the Renaissance world, but also to appreciate the passions and intrigues that lie beneath our own disciplined attempts to b ring order to the world. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an unforgettable journey through these layered realities — and a bibliophile’s dream!

Last night saw the launch of THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS in the beautiful Wren Library in Cambridge. Home to over 700,000 books printed before the 1820s, medieval manuscripts and archives, the Wren Library was the perfect location to launch the captivating biography of a man who dedicated his life to the collection of books. Edward will be appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book programme on Sunday 20 May to talk about Hernando’s library.

Rights to THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS have been sold internationally in France, Spain, Germany, Japan and Italy, with more international news to come shortly!

Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature and Shakespeare. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between.

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Visit his website

Praise for THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS:

‘Edward Wilson-Lee’s fascinating and beautifully written account of how Hernando conceived and assembled his library is set within a highly original biography of the compiler. It’s a work of imagination restrained by respect for evidence, of brilliance suitably alloyed by erudition, and of scholarship enlivened by sensitivity and acuity. … The ‘library that would collect everything’ became, as it grew unmanageably, a Borgesian labyrinth of ‘baffling marvels’. Wilson-Lee describes it with verve and strews his account with Rabelaisian lists, incantatory and almost magical in effect, of the sort Hernando loved.’ — Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Literary Review

‘Hernando Columbus deserves to be as famous as his father, Christopher…Wilson-Lee’s greatest strength is the subtlety with which Hernando’s public life as a courtier and his private life as a collector are interwoven. Unless you like libraries a lot then the most important thing about Hernando is not the most interesting. But in these elegantly handled parallels, Wilson-Lee leads us almost by stealth to an understanding of his subject’s greatest achievement.’ — Dennis Duncan, Spectator

'T‎his is a remarkable and deeply absorbing book – both a vivid account of the extraordinary life of Hernando Colón, younger son of Christopher Columbus, and a thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which we acquire, organise and retrieve information about the world and our place in it. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is minutely-researched history that reads like fiction – at once hauntingly redolent of Eco and Borges, and sharply relevant in our data-driven age.' — Helen Castor, author of SHE-WOLVES: THE WOMEN WHO RULED ENGLAND BEFORE ELIZABETH

‘Edward Wilson-Lee’s terrific new book brings to life Christopher Columbus’s son Hernando, his quirky and dazzling library, and the complex worlds between which he lived. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS eloquently captures the life of an extraordinary man, while making his era resonate with our own: it is about how we seek to organise our minds and our lives, and, above all, about why books continue to matter.’ — Joe Moshenska, author of A STAIN IN THE BLOOD

SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILIlAND paperback out today!

Edward Wilson Lee’s much-acclaimed SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet is out in paperback from Williams Collins today. First published by William Collins (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) in 2016, the year of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, it was one of The Bookseller’s Top 6 Shakespeare picks of 2016, and was highlighted in previews of ‘the most significant Shakespeare books’ in The Times, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. It will be published in German by btb in 2018.

Investigating the literary culture of the early interaction between European countries and East Africa, Edward Wilson-Lee uncovers an extraordinary sequence of stories in which explorers, railway labourers, decadent émigrés, freedom fighters, and pioneering African leaders made Shakespeare their own in this alien land.

This radical, breath-taking book combines travel, history, biography and satire in an ode to Shakespeare. Wilson-Lee teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge but grew up in East Africa and SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND explores Shakespeare’s global legacy like no other book before it. In these pages explorers stagger through Africa's interior accompanied by Shakespeare; eccentrics live out their dreams on the African Savannah with Shakespeare by their side; decadent emigres, railway labourers, Indian settler communities, African intellectuals and rebels all turned to Shakespeare and adapted his plays to fit their needs. The book examines how Shakespeare influenced the first African leaders of independent nations, Cold War intrigues and even Che Guevara.

With its incredible series of stories and momentous travels from Zanzibar, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, this literary adventure throws high culture and the wild together in celebration of Shakespeare's legacy as a poet of the world.

Wilson-Lee explained that his book 'aims to find the holy grail of literary studies – an answer to why Shakespeare should be so universally adored – in the most unlikely of places; along the way it is a travelogue, a memoir, a satire, an ode to Shakespeare, and a potted history of a region which combines breathtaking beauty and cultural riches with the heartache of injustice, poverty, and amnesia.'

Praise for SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND:

‘Edward Wilson-Lee goes in search of Shakespeare in Africa and finds him entwined in every twist and turn of the drama of colonization and decolonization of the continent from the 17th century to the present. The result is a masterly literary detective adventure. A compelling read.’ – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o,

'There will be many books published to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Few will be bolder than Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet, in which Edward Wilson-Lee gets out of the seminar room and treks through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan to discover how Shakespeare has been constantly reinvented in Africa.' – Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education

'Wilson-Lee’s account of his East African Shakespeare-hunt is vivid and full of insights. What we learn about colonial power relationships and historical currents is as convincing as any general explanations of Shakespeare’s universalism, but that, perhaps, is partly the point: it’s the very fact that Shakespeare is so read and performed, with these multiple interactions each revealing something, that demonstrates his boundless potential.' - Daniel Hahn, The Independent

‘SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND is an attempt to understand whether the great playwright’s work speaks across cultural boundaries to a shared humanity. … It has successfully told a lesser-known story of Africa, and it is a story worth knowing.’ – The Economist

‘This book evinces a remarkable familiarity with Africa, filtered through the lens of that most-English poet and playwright… Wilson-Lee shows the Bard to be a man for all continents.’ – Critic’s Choice, The New Criterion

 ‘Compelling and affecting" – Tim Black, Spiked!

'✭✭✭✭' - Michael Kerr, Telegraph Travel

‘I thought nothing could surprise me about the impact of England’s greatest cultural figure, but this fascinating, readable book about his influence in East Africa certainly did.’ – The Lady

‘A glorious melange of travel, biography, history and satire’ – The Times, South Africa

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Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature and Shakespeare. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between. Edward is currently writing his second book, THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS, for publication by William Collins in 2018.