Audiobooks by Edward Wilson-Lee

A History of Water: Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Visions of Global History

‘Exhilarating and whip-smart’ THE SUNDAY TIMESFrom award-winning writer Edward Wilson-Lee, this is a thrilling true historical detective story set in sixteenth-century Portugal. A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

Edward Wilson-Lee (Author), Richard Trinder (Narrator)

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Memorial de los libros naufragados

Cómo Hernando Colón, hijo de Cristóbal Colón, creó la primera biblioteca moderna y organizó el conocimiento al mejor estilo de la era digital. El Memorial de los libros naufragados cuenta la historia casi increíble -pero completamente cierta- del hijo menor de Cristóbal Colón, Hernando, quien procuró igualar o incluso superar los méritos de su padre creando una biblioteca universal, la más extraña y variadísima colección de materiales impresos, desde libros, manuscritos y panfletos hasta estampas, folletos, partituras, pósteres de tabernas y un largo etcétera. Este enorme y curioso legado tenía para él un valor incalculable, porque le acercó a su objetivo de construir una biblioteca que lo abarcara todo, en un sentido nunca antes imaginado. Conocido como el biógrafo más importante de Cristóbal Colón, así como por supervisar los primeros mapas modernos del mundo y visitar las principales capitales europeas en busca de libros, Hernando se nos revela en esta obra como uno de los primeros y más grandes visionarios, que cambió la forma de organizar el conocimiento, tanto por el carácter intuitivo con el que configuró la que fue la biblioteca privada más grande del momento como por la manera como organizó la información, con la que rompió todos los paradigmas y se acercó a lo que sería hoy, como dice Edward Wilson-Lee, el big data, la Wikipedia e internet.

Edward Wilson-Lee (Author), Oscar Goikoetxea (Narrator)

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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library

Without libraries, what have we? We have no past and no future. This book tells for the first time in English the story of the first great universal library in the age of printing - and of the son of Christopher Columbus who created it. This is the scarcely believable - and wholly true - story of Christopher Columbus' bastard son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his father's achievements by creating a universal library. His father sailed across the ocean to explore the known boundaries of the world for the glory of God, Spain and himself. His son Hernando sought instead to harness the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the world's knowledge in one place, his library in Seville. Hernando was one of the first and greatest visionaries of the print age, someone who saw how the scale of available information would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. His was an immensely eventual life. As a youth, he spent years travelling in the New World, and spent one living with his father in a shipwreck off Jamaica. He created a dictionary and a geographical encyclopaedia of Spain, helped to create the first modern maps of the world, spent time in almost every major European capital, and associated with many of the great people of his day, from Ferdinand and Isabel to Erasmus, Thomas More, and Dürer. He wrote the first biography of his father, almost single-handedly creating the legend of Columbus that held sway for many hundreds of years, and was highly influential in crafting how Europe saw the world his father reached in 1492. He also amassed the largest collection of printed images and of printed music of the age, started what was perhaps Europe's first botanical garden, and created by far the greatest private library Europe had ever seen, dwarfing with its 15,000 books every other library of the day. Edward Wilson-Lee has written the first major modern biography of Hernando - and the first of any kind available in English. In a work of dazzling scholarship, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells an enthralling tale of the age of print and exploration, a story with striking lessons for our own modern experiences of information revolution and Globalisation.

Edward Wilson-Lee (Author), Richard Trinder (Narrator)

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Shakespeare in Swahililand

Exploring the unexpected history of Shakespeare's global legacy, is a breathtaking combination of travel, history, biography and satire. It traces Shakespeare's influence in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya - where Cambridge lecturer Edward Wilson-Lee was raised. From Victorian expeditions in which the Bard's works were the sole reading material, Wilson-Lee shows how Shakespeare's works have been a vital touchstone throughout the region. The Plays were printed by liberated slaves as one of the first texts in Swahili, performed by Indian labourers while they built the Uganda Railway, used to argue for native rights, and translated by intellectuals, revolutionaries and independence leaders. Revealing how great works can provide a key insight into modern history, these stories investigate the astonishing poignancy of beauty out of place.

Edward Wilson-Lee (Author), Gordon Griffin (Narrator)

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