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The garden against time: in search of a common paradise

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Pan Macmillan 2024 DublinDescription: 317 p. : ill. includes references and IndexISBN:
  • 9781529066678
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 712.6 L2G2
Summary: In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew them into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris. New modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change. https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/olivia-laing/the-garden-against-time/9781529066678
List(s) this item appears in: Fiction @ VSL
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Item type Current library Item location Collection Shelving location Call number Status Notes Date due Barcode
Books Vikram Sarabhai Library Rack 40-B / Slot 2317 (2nd Floor, East Wing) Fiction General Stacks 712.6 L2G2 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 207674

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew them into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens.

Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.

But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris. New modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.


https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/olivia-laing/the-garden-against-time/9781529066678

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