The Encantadas

$18.95

In this lavishly descriptive pioneering work of ecofiction, written just after the publication of Moby Dick, Herman Melville records the dawn of the anthropocene as it unfolds amid the teeming, treacherous islands of the Galápagos—or, as they were also known, the Enchanted Islands—the Encantadas. Now with an all-new introduction by Elizabeth Hennessy, author of On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden, plus ten new full-color illustrations from artist Eric Tonzola, enclosed within a clothbound hardcover case, Wild Lot Press brings this long-overlooked novella to modern readers.

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Description

Featuring ten interlinked “sketches,” The Encantadas takes you to a desert-island landscape where aspirations of utopia, plunder, and colonization are dashed against a natural world indifferent to human success, pirates daydream among the volcanic rocks, and heroes and villains come and go like the tides, while through the centuries, the tortoises carry on their eternal wandering. 

About the author: Herman Melville (1819–1891) is one of America’s most enduring writers and author of arguably the greatest American novel, Moby Dick. In 1854 he first published “The Encantadas,” an interlinked set of ten sketches based on his own travels to the Galápagos Islands in November of 1841, as a young sailor aboard the Nantucket-based whaling ship the Acushnet.

About the introduction author: Elizabeth Hennessy is an associate professor of History, History of Science, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she teaches global environmental history. Her book, On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden was published by Yale University Press in 2019 and was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

About the illustrator: Eric Tonzola creates futuristic landscapes that capture the natural world and spin it on its head. Inspired by science fiction and fantasy, his style crosses over into the eerie and darkest corners of the whimsical imagination. @tonzola_art tonzolaart.com

For bulk orders, wholesale orders, or review copies, please contact publisher@wildlotpress.com.