The Lightning Thread: Fishological Moments and The Pursuit of Paradise

About this book

From award winning novelist and journalist David Profumo comes a dazzling work about the restorative power of nature and finding joy in simple pleasures. David Profumo has fished everywhere man and boy and come back with his creel crammed with adventures and misadventures - a memoir for every fishermans bookshelf. Tom Stoppard It is often said there is more to the experience of fishing than the mere catching of fish and in this evocative wide-ranging memoir he explores the delights and mysteries of one of mankinds most ancient pursuits. As we move from the Highland waters of his childhood and into his adult travels from the Arctic Circle to the South Seas The Lightning Thread unpeels this idiosyncratic subject and shows how it embraces folklore poetry magic drink and disaster. By turns a lyrical celebration of the natural world and also the quirkiness of human nature itself this is a hymn to the great happiness that pursuing his lifes passion has brought the author. In exuberant prose of warmth wit and lightly worn erudition this is a future classic from one of our finest writers across forty countries and sixty years one mans quest for perfection. With wit quiet craft and a lifetimes store of piscatorial wisdom Profumo draws us into his paradise. Angling he teaches us is the continuation of childhood by other means. Luke Jennings author of the Killing Eve novels A fabulous confection of history biology philosophy and memoirspiked with wit and crafted with precision and style. Loyd Grossman An angling master who wears his knowledge lightly and a dazzling writer. Everyone remotely interested in fishing or writing would love this book. Prue Leith The Lightning Thread is a delicious account of a lifetime spent among interesting fish people and places by a compulsive angler who seems to have forgotten nothing. Unimaginable that any fisherman could put it down. Thomas McGuane author of The Longest Silence