Author(s): Tom Blass

Nature Writing | Travel

Oozing with bad airs, boggarts and other spirits, the world's marshes and swamps are often seen as sinister, permanently twilit - and only partly of this earth. For centuries, they - and their inhabitants - have been the object of our distrust. We have tried to drain away their demons and tame them, destroying their fragile beauty, botany and birdlife, along with the carefully calibrated lives of those who have come to understand and thrive in them.
In Swamp Songs, Tom Blass journeys through a series of such watery landscapes, from Romney Marsh to North Carolina, from Lapland to the Danube Delta and on to the Bay of Bengal, encountering those whose very existence has been shaped by wetlands, their myths and hidden histories. Here are tales of shepherds, smugglers and salt-gatherers; of mangroves and machismo, frogs and fishermen. And of carp soup, tiger gods, flamingos and floods.A dazzling exploration of lives lived on the fringes of civilisation, Swamp Songs is a vital reappraisal and vibrant celebration of people and environments closely intertwined.

Review: Bracingly original ... Blass reveals himself to be more ethnologist than naturalist. While he pays respectful attention to the fauna that he encounters as he tacks from the Romney Marshes to Louisiana's bayous by way of the Danube delta, it is the people he is after. -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian *
A mixture of travelogue, local history and reportage, Swamp Songs brims with evocative word sketches ... Blass makes an exuberant and loquacious guide -- Sara Hudston * Times Literary Supplement *
Enriching and magical, Tom Blass's writing is a pleasure to read. -- Donald S. Murray
What a joy to roam with Tom Blass through some of nature's most unjustly maligned and underappreciated habitats, where webs of life interconnect wildly and wondrously with human stories. Swamp Songs is a delicious blend of ecology and culture. -- Amy-Jane Beer
PRAISE FOR THE NAKED SHORE: A wonderfully bracing journey around the North Sea. His gaze misses nothing, and his robust prose glitters with story and lore and surprise -- Philip Marsden
A hugely enjoyable anti-tour, and a wonderful eulogy to an implacable ocean * Times Literary Supplement *
Tom Blass champions a subtlety of vision, a determination to discern the marvellous in the unprepossessing * Daily Telegraph *
Remarkable ... I was relieved to find that his work is not of the trendy Thoreau-esque school of travel writing, but more down to earth ... Terrifically enjoyable * Literary Review *
Captivating ... Rich, evocative prose ... Part travelogue, part history book and part anthropological study, Blass's intensely rewarding memoir succeeds in scattering some light into the North Sea's cold and murky depths, revealing both its wonders and its indivisible relationship with humanity * Independent *
So extremely good that we hope it will bring a warmth and richness to your early spring reading. That said, you'll probably want to dive into this fabulous account somewhere indoors rather than settling down on a blustery beach * Guardian *

Author Biography: Tom Blass studied anthropology, law and politics, and has earned his living as a journalist and editor specialising in issues relating to business, law, human rights and foreign policy. He lives with his family in Hastings. His first book, The Naked Shore, was published in 2016.