by Jane Alison (Author)

In the manner of W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants, Natives and Exotics follows three characters, linked by blood and legacy, as they wander a world scarred by colonialism.

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A kind of family album where, finally, no one is out of place.--The New York Times Book Review
Transplanted halfway around the globe in 1970, nine-year-old Alice is ravished by the beauty of Ecuador, a country her diplomat parents are helping to despoil. Forty years earlier, her grandmother Violet, a newlywed making a home in the wilds of Australia, confronts troubling traces of her country's past. In his time, Violet's great-great-grandfather George flees violence in Scotland, only to unwittingly destroy the earthly paradise he finds in the Portuguese Azores. Natives and Exotics follows these three characters, linked by blood and legacy, in their uneasy affairs with nature as they restlessly search for home.
"In Natives and Exotics, Jane Alison takes us where history books can't or won't go . . . Though set hundreds of years apart, these stories quickly flow into a single narrative powerful enough to show how closely related our familial, political and natural worlds really are." The Washington Post Book World

"Vivid and poignant . . . What gives pleasure is how precisely [Alison] sees the fierce beauty of the natural world, as it moves, grows, evolves, both despite and because of the blind interference of humankind." The Seattle Times
"A family's diaspora becomes an intriguing tale told backward . . . Exquisitely observed, wonderfully off the beaten track."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jane Alison is the author of The Love-Artist and The Marriage of the Sea. Born in Canberra, Australia, she grew up in the foreign service and the United States. She now lives in Germany and teaches in the MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Author Biography

JANE ALISON is the author of The Love-Artist and The Marriage of the Sea. Born in Canberra, Australia, she grew up in the foreign service and the United States. She now lives in Germany and teaches in the MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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