Book Description:
Something happens—often magical, sometimes life-threatening, rarely mundane—when men and women put a plank between themselves and the water and set out on a voyage, whether for a day or a lifetime. The sea's ever-changing beauty, vastness, unbridled wildness and unpredictability make it an incomparable setting for human drama— one that has inspired generations of writers to capture what a voyage upon it is like. Now Sail Away: Stories of Escaping to Sea brings together the very best of this vast literature—and offers something to thrill and entertain every sailor and water-loving adventurer. Comprised of short stories, novel excerpts and narrative nonfiction, Sail Away includes twenty-one unforgettable pieces, including short stories by Jason Brown, Roald Dahl, John Rolfe Gardiner, Mary Lavin, and W.S. Merwin; narrative nonfiction by Bryan Burrough, Pete Goss, and Paul Theroux; and excerpts from such classics as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. The selections in Sail Away cover the entire gamut of navigational experience, from the travails of a solo sailor in Ann Davison's My Ship is So Small, to adventures on a surfboard in Daniel Duane's Caught Inside, to the terrors of a monk's final journey in Inoue Yasushi's 'Passage to Fudaraku.' 'We've heard it said,' editors Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker write in their introduction, 'that, 'on a ship, there is a fate in every plank.' This is no cliché; no two voyages, no two excursions, are ever alike. That every journey on water is unique isn't just a matter of different times, different places, but something much more fundamental. On a purely physical level, being on water is literally the closest thing we have to inhabiting a parallel universe—at least until space travel becomes practicable.' Consider Sail Away an essential report from this parallel universe—and an essential companion as you dream about and discover it for yourself.
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