South

by Merlin Coverley

How has the idea of the South come to exert such a powerful hold over our imagination? From the beaches of Southern Europe to the Great White South of the Antarctic; from South America to the South Pacific, South explores this most diverse and captivating of regions. The South has long since cast its spell on writers and artists, from Goethe and Poe, to Gauguin, Lawrence and Kerouac; while landscapes of ice and snow, sand and sea, have lured explorers southwards for centuries, often with fatal consequences. This book will follow in the footsteps of Cook, Scott, John Muir and others as they recount their journeys.

256 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2017

Reviews

[Sasha McDonald · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book hard because of its deeply flawed analysis of ‘south’, and ‘southernness’.

Littered with grammatical and even spelling errors, so much so, I’m not even going to pass this book on.

Coverley fails spectacularly to account for the racialised colonialism that is an essential for this endeavour.

As a early fleet/son of an immigrant in Australia, I have a keen awareness of western thought in southern contexts. Words cannot express how poorly this omission has impacted me.

And as a scholar of social science, methodologically speaking, this book is deeply flawed. Would not recommend.

[Carol Griffiths · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book looking at the idea of "south". The author ranges from describing going south on the Grand Tour, to the exploration of Antarctica. Sometimes "south" is seen as representing a dark side of life and at others it seems to represent freedom, sun, and light.

[Ionut Dobrinescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and fluent essay using SOUTH as an ambulatory pretext to revisit places, ideologies, memories and biographies, antropology and geopolitics.