Voices of the Old Sea by Norman Lewis is an account of his years spent living in a then remote Spanish village.
In the late 1940s, Norman Lewis settles in a remote fishing village on what is now the Costa Brava in Spain, relishing a society where the villagers regulated their lives by the sardine shoals of spring and autumn and the tuna fishing of summer, and made frugal ends meet.
Over the course of three years he watches with sorrow and affection as they struggle to hang on to a way of life unchanged for centuries. How long can their precarious economy, their ancient feuds and traditions – not least the evenings of impromptu blank verse in the bar – hold out against the encroaching tide of package tourism?
‘. . . a haunting book that encapsulates a whole social revolution.’ Sunday Telegraph
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