Nation

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At first, Mau blames the gods. The Nation believes that Imo created the world. Imo first created the ocean and then fish. Believing that the fish were stupid and lazy, Imo took some dolphins and from them made people. Then he made land for the people so they would not have to swim all day. Soon the people multiplied and became hungry, so Imo made night and Locaha, the god of death. At this point, Imo realized that the world was flawed. He was about to start over when Locaha intervened. Locaha urged Imo to create his perfect world but also asked Imo to allow the flawed world to remain. Locaha promises turn the dead into dolphins until it is their time to be reborn, but when a person Here’s the former press officer of the Central Electricity Generating Board, South Western Region, with his name in lights – Terry Pratchett at the peak of his powers. He could see that the village had gone. The wave had sliced it off the island. A few stumps marked the place the long house had stood since….. for ever. The wave had torn up the reef. A wave like that would not have even noticed the village." Even more survivors have now arrived at the Nation, and Daphne begins hearing the voices of the Grandmothers, who claim to be the neglected but more sensible counterparts to the Grandfathers. They suggest that Daphne explore an ancient, closed-off crypt called the Grandfathers' cave. Mau, Daphne, Ataba, and their companions enter this cave and discover that the Nation is probably the oldest civilization on Earth, whose citizens once made astounding scientific progress with such creations as telescopes, eyeglasses, and even accurate star charts.

It was this fear that drove him to put up on the wall of his office a large picture of WH Smith’s book-pulping machine. It was there, he said, to remind him to write a better book. So these two young people meet, a sort of Adam and Eve story in which neither understands the other's language, behavior, customs, or lifestyle. Mau struggles desperately to understand how the gods could allow such an enormous calamity to befall his people. He continually questions his religion and his sacred beliefs. The best parts of the book are those where Mau and Daphne try to understand one another, their motivations, beliefs, and relationships with other people. I don’t know how my reading of this particular book has been affected by the fact that I am new to Terry Pratchett’s main oeuvre but this to me, was simply wonderful. Interestingly enough, limited as my Terry Pratchett experience might be, I found Nation to be slightly different in tone (not as funny) to the other books I have read from the author but exactly the same in how smart it is. Nation reminded me everything that's great with Pratchett and added a little bit extra to what I liked about him. The book was both very intelligently written and extremely clever, and sweet and heart-felt at the same time. Aged nine or 10, his daughter Rhianna drew a picture of a hat and wrote underneath it: “I love my father but he is very busy.”

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The scene where Mau is sending all of his village, everyone he’s ever known, off into the ocean is so beautiful and heartbreaking. It makes me break down every time. (You must have been a mess if you were reading this on the plane.) All of that philosophy, though, comes at the expense of some of the action, and there are places in this book that bog down a bit; after the exciting opening chapters, the real plot only happens in the second half. But the reader is carried along by some of Pratchett's best characters ever, most especially Mau and Ermintrude. There is little more enthralling than watching young people wrestle with doing the right thing while trying to get a grip on reality. This book may not have everything Pratchett's young fans have learned to expect in his books, but they may get something else they hadn't bargained for.

There will be no unhappy memories. No more words. We know them all. All the words that must not be said. But you have made my world more perfect. But in this book, hidden beneath character development that is nothing short of breathtaking and amidst a story that will at times make you laugh out loud (SHOW US YER DRAWERS!) and at times shed a tear, exists such a revelation that you will begin to question our own history. Pratchett has not just settled for telling a story of people, but has provided an answer to the beginning of human civilization (if not our own, then one of them). This book is so wonderful and continues to be so upon multiple readings (or listenings). I re-listened to this in Feb, right after recommending it to you, and fell in love with it all over again. Insects went zing and zip all around her, but they weren’t as bad as the huge spiders that had woven their webs right across the paths and then hung in them, bigger than a hand and almost spitting with rage. Daphne had read in one of her books about the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean islands that "with a few regrettable examples, the larger and more fearsome the spider is, the less likely it is to be venomous.- She didn’t believe it. She could see Regrettable Examples everywhere, and she was sure that some of them were drooling" ---The Nation / Terry Pratchett

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I suppose if Pratchett had the reputation or high profile of Philip Pullman or J. K. Rowling, then there would be a huge cry of how this book should be snatched from the hands of impressable children before they learn how to think for themselves. Maybe there is already such an outcry, but I haven't heard anything. In an epilogue, the last chapter of the book, it is the twenty-first century. The Nation is full of scientists but has kept its own culture. An old man tells two young children of the Nation about Mau and Daphne and how to use an old telescope.

Written loosely in a third-person perspective, the novel is set in an alternative history of our world, shortly after Charles Darwin has published On the Origin of Species. [5] A recent Russian influenza pandemic has just killed the British king and his next 137 heirs. Except for the opening chapter, the novel's action entirely occurs in the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean (the fictionalised South Pacific Ocean) on a particular island known by its indigenous inhabitants as "the Nation". And that's the wonderful thing about this book. It causes the reader to think while being entertained. And Pratchett accomplishes all of this without being preachy or trying to substitute his answer for your own. In fact, his message seems to be that you must have faith in something--whether it's a god, a science, or a nation. As long as what you believe in is good and furthers mankind, your faith is not wasted. Perhaps his stance is best summed up by one of the characters:Because Mao is in between being a boy and a man, he thinks he has no soul. Mao often thinks that he is like a hermit crab that has left one shell but not found another one yet. Because of this, Mao and other people wonder if demons and other evil spirits will get into Mao's body. In the alternate history of the book, a Russian flu pandemic has thrown the world in turmoil by killing not only the king, but also all of the 137 heirs in the royal line of succession. Meanwhile, the book's main plot takes place on a remote but populated island simply referred to as "Nation" in the South Pelagic Ocean, which is Pratchett's fictional name for the South Pacific Ocean. Shenton, Mark (18 June 2009). "National Theatre Season to Include Fiona Shaw as Mother Courage, Pratchett's Nation". Playbill.com . Retrieved 22 June 2009.

Disguised as an adventure story for young people, this is in fact a very sharp reflexion on the meaning of life, the importance of the choices we make and how seemingly catastrophic events can lead to amazing experiences, which can be so life changing that we would doubt to opt (if it was possible) for those events, as terrible as they might have been, not to have occurred. Todo mundo sabe eso que dice que Gaiman de que las obras de su compadre estaban motivadas por la furia. Detrás del ji ji ji y el jo jo jo a Pratchett se le nota una frustración suprema con las cosas que no le parecían de la humanidad. Pero rara vez llegó a verse tan, digamos, directo como con esta novela. There is little time to reflect on these discoveries and developments. Everyone in the Nation knows that soon Mau’s fire will attract cannibalistic raiders, and Daphne believes that another mutineer named Cox is leading them. Mau immediately sets to work preparing to defend the island. He appropriates Sweet Judy’s derelict cannons and has his villagers practice firing them, though they only mime the process because the cannons are too old to actually be fired and there is not enough gunpowder left for practice. Daphne worries that Mau is leading the Nation to its death, but Mau asks her to trust in his leadership. Life goes on for the island's inhabitants in a state of peace and relative normalcy until a group of vicious European men led by a villain named Cox arrive. They kidnap Daphne who recognizes them as the men who led a mutiny on the Sweet Judy ship. Daphne outsmarts the men, escaping their clutches. Soon after, Cox becomes the de facto leader of the cannibals, attempting to use them as his own personal army to take over the island for himself. To avoid a large-scale battle, Mau convinces Cox to fight him in one-on-one combat for control of the island. Mau easily defeats Cox, saving the day.They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.” Nation is a rich and intricate novel. Yes ,it does have an obvious message about the power and importance of thinking, but this never overwhelms the characters or the story. I understood this very well when I started crying when the book was over. Plus, the epilogue is a wonderful gift from an author who truly understands his readers. Pratchett took his editors by surprise by writing it before the previously scheduled Tiffany Aching conclusion. He has said "I want to write this one so much I can taste it", and that he's been ready to do it for four years. [4] Pratchett said in February 2007, "At the moment I'm just writing. If it needs to be Discworld it will be Discworld. It could be set in this world 150 years ago while still more or less being a fantasy. The codename for it is Nation." [4] Synopsis [ edit ] Context [ edit ]