This image is the cover for the book Voices of the Old Sea

Voices of the Old Sea

A memoir of a remote Spanish fishing village just after WWII, a community on the brink of change, by “the finest travel writer of the last century” (The New Yorker).

Seeking solace in the everyday after his World War II army service, travel writer Norman Lewis returns to his beloved Spain, to the fishing village of Farol, in the hopes of recapturing a lost sense of home. It is a place he knows better than his native England, and he finds the Spanish countryside “still as nostalgically backward-looking as ever, still magnificent, still invested with all its ancient virtues and ancient defects.” He spends three seasons as a fisherman, basking in the simplicity of village customs.

Lovingly written and richly evocative, Voices of the Old Sea is an absorbing look at a centuries-old lifestyle in its final days, as the tide of modernization threatens to change it forever.

Norman Lewis

Norman Lewis (1908–2003) was one of the greatest English-language travel writers. He was the author of thirteen novels and fourteen works of nonfiction, including Naples ’44, The Tomb in Seville, and Voices of the Old Sea. Lewis served in the Allied occupation of Italy during World War II, and reported from Mafia-ruled Sicily and Vietnam under French-colonial rule, among other locations. Born in England, he traveled extensively, living in places including London, Wales, Nicaragua, a Spanish fishing village, and the countryside near Rome.

Open Road Integrated Media