Pl. Catalunya, 39-41 08820 El Prat de Llobregat T 93.370.51.52 b.prat.am@diba.es Horari: dilluns de 15.30 a 21 Dimarts a divendres de 10 a 21 Dissabtes de 10 a 19
May 2013
ENGLISH READING CLUB
ENJOY READING! GERALD DURRELL My family and other animals
GERALD DURRELL (7 Jan. 1925, India-30 Jan. 1995, Island of Jersey, English Channel)
-------------------------------- BIOGRAPHY Gerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, was an English naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter. He founded what is now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo (now Durrell Wildlife Park) on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1958, but is perhaps best remembered for writing a number of books based on his life as an animal collector and enthusiast. He was the youngest brother of the novelist Lawrence Durrell. Durrell's books, both fiction and non-fiction, have a wry, loose style that poked fun at himself as well as those around him. Perhaps his best-known work is My Family and Other Animals (1956), which tells of his idyllic, if oddball, childhood on Corfu. Later made into a TV series, it is delightfully deprecating about the whole family, especially elder brother Lawrence, who became a famous novelist. Despite Durrell's jokes at the expense of "brother Larry", the two were close friends all their lives. Gerald Durrell always insisted that he wrote for royalties to help the cause of environmental stewardship, not out of an inherent love for writing. Gerald Durrell describes himself as a writer in comparison to his brother Lawrence: The subtle difference between us is that he loves writing and I don't. To me it's simply a way to make money which enables me to do my animal work, nothing more.
----------------------------------SELECTED WORKS
Fiction The Donkey Rustlers (1968) Rosie Is My Relative (1968) The Talking Parcel (Battle for Castle Cockatrice) (1974) The Mockery Bird (The Billion Dollar Brain) (1981) The Fantastic Flying Journey: An Adventure in Natural History (1987) The Fantastic Dinosaur Adventure: A New Adventure in Natural History (1989) Keeper (1990) Toby the Tortoise (1991) Puppy Tales: Puppy's Beach Adventure, Puppy's Field Day, Puppy's Pet Pals, Puppy's Wild Time (1993)
----------------------------My family and other animals (1956)
The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell, age 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a sojourn on the island of Corfu. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas where the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and dietobsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. They are fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro (Spiros "Americano" Halikiopoulos) and mentored by the polymath Dr. Theodore Stephanides who provides Gerald with his education in natural history. Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald's private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local peasants who befriend the family. The human comedy is mingled with descriptions of the animal life which Gerald observes on his expeditions around the family homes, island, and seashore and which he frequently brings back and keeps as pets; these include “Achilles” the tortoise, “Quasimodo” the pigeon, “Ulysses” the Scops owl, numerous spiders, “Alecko” the gull, puppies named “Widdle and Puke”, and the birds known as the “Magenpies”. It is the first and most famous of Durrell's Corfu trilogy, together with Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods.