The Ripple Effect

Paperback 274 pages ISBN 9781904959755 Author: Sarah Lawson Price £12.00 (price includes delivery worldwide) Publication date 26 January 2009

Synopsis

Sarah Lawson came back from a trip in Poland in 1980 never suspecting that for the rest of her life she would have an increasing connection with the country she had just visited as a tourist. Twenty-five years later in The Ripple Effect she looks back at the series of circumstances and encounters that resulted from an incident that seemed minor at the time but proved to be life-changing.

Later I'm swimming in the lake. It comes to me that I know the words for “Look out” and "I am" in Polish. I can say "Look out! I'm a piranha!" I call out to Ula in my most alarming voice: "Uwagal Jestem pirania!" It's something, but it’ll be hard to work it into a conversation.

Sarah Lawson was born in Indianapolis and educated at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania and Glasgow University, where she took a PhD in English in 1971. She taught at Suzhou University in China and wrote a series of poems, All the Tea in China (Hearing Eye) about the experience. She has published poetry, book reviews, translations, and a memoir, A Fado for my Mother (Loxwood-Stoneleigh). She translates from Spanish, Dutch, and French and must be the only person to have translated both Christine de Pisan and Jacques Prévert. She is a member of PEN and has been a Hawthornden Fellow.