Ponce De Leon, Napoleon Baccino

New York. 1994. Harcourt Brace & Company. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0151562962. Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor. 347 pages. hardcover. Jacket art: The World Map of Cantino (detail), anonymous, 1502. Inset panel: Fragment of a maritime chart by Cuillaume Le Testu, sixteenth century. Jacket design by Vaughn Andrews. keywords: Literature Translated Uruguay Latin America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In rich, sensuous, robust prose, with earthy humor and stunning poetry, Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon, a new writer from Uruguay, spins a yarn of men and ships. Of fog, jungle mazes, thirst, fear, illness, scorching sun, icy winds, bad omens, mutiny, and madness. A tale of the real men behind history's list of names. Of homesickness, loneliness, and the need for women, who belong to the land, not the sea. And as Juanillo, the fool of the fleet, jokes and sings and plays his thousand tricks to beguile the sailors and don Fernando, his master-making irreverent asides about monarchs and the cruelty of power-he brings to us all the sights and sounds and smells of the voyage. The beating of the waves against the hull, the creaking of the boards, men hanging from the rigging like rag dolls, iron and bronze fittings covered with verdigris, seaweed dark and soft as moss, giant crabs that glint blue like sword blades in moonlight, fish like jewels, and the sad howling of sea lions on deserted coasts of gray rock. A marvelous novel about the first circumnavigation of the globe, about explorers who face suffering and death, and about the life-giving power of the imagination. inventory #25635 ISBN: 0151562962.