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The Encantadas And Other Stories
In this novella, Herman Melville takes us to an Edenic island that turns out to be less of a paradise and more of a purgatory.
NPR stories about The Encantadas And Other Stories
Three Books...
Spooky And Cerebral: 3 Brainy Books For Halloween
Sun-drenched islands have often proved to be perfect settings for the darkest of tales. In his early books, Typee and Omoo, Herman Melville wrote about the charms of island people, but in his novella set in the Galapagos, The Encantadas, he paints a very different picture. "No voice, no low, no howl is heard: the chief sound of life here is a hiss." In each of 10 sketches, Melville depicts another aspect of this desolate world: from the hopeless patience of... more
—Lisa Tucker
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