H for hawk
H for Habicht is a novel-like autobiographical treatise by the British author Helen Macdonald . The original British edition, H is for Hawk , was published in 2014 by Jonathan Cape Verlag and has 300 pages. The German first edition was published on August 7, 2015 by Allegria Verlag in a translation by Ulrike Kretschmer. The novel was published in 2014 a. a. awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book Award . The book tells the story of her hunting experience from the author's point of view. Her father, Alisdair Macdonald, was a well-respected photojournalist who suddenly died of a heart attack in 2007 . In the course of coping with grief , the author acquires a young female hawk , which she trains to hunt . The book is a genre mix of biography, autobiography, nature and animal description, which is assigned to the current British trend New Nature Writing .
content
After the sudden death of her father, Alisdair Macdonald, the Cambridge university professor and author of the novel seeks a way to overcome her grief over the loss. Helen Macdonald describes her father in the book as her most important caregiver and personal haven of calm who, through his death, leaves a large void in her life. Father and daughter share a passion for flying . The author describes her father as an airplane enthusiast , especially with a keen interest in aviation technology. She herself was more interested in the biological component of aviation, especially that of birds of prey . At the age of twelve she acquired her first falcon and later wanted to practice the profession of falconer. For this purpose she also acquired the cryptic technical terminology of falconry. Her father supported her in her unusual hobby.
When her father died in 2007, MacDonald decided to relive her childhood dream and train her own hawk to help overcome her deep grief. To do this, she acquires a female hawk whom she calls Mabel . She tells her personal experiences while training the hawk in her novel.
The author describes the attempt to train Mabel for the hunt extensively with all its successes and setbacks. Her obsession for Mabel is limitless and she is almost exclusively occupied with training her bird. In particular, it describes the lengthy process of training and the slow success in training the animal. It takes a long time before she can let Mabel fly free for the first time. The highlight of the first hunting experience is when Mabel has successfully struck her first prey and then lands back on the falconer's glove.
The reader also learns the extensive falconry language and learns a lot about the descriptions of nature with regard to the biology of the hawk, especially through the realistic descriptions of how the raptor hunts and kills its prey. Through her collaboration with Mabel, Macdonald hopes to find her own way again and to regain her personal freedom and thus be able to come to terms with the death of her father.
In the course of time, however, she realizes that simply returning to nature cannot save her from her situation. In her private environment, things threaten to slip away from her more and more; so her contract at the University of Cambridge was not renewed. She refuses a visiting professorship in Berlin , which means that she can no longer pay her living expenses and a. has to move into a short-term vacant house of friends. Her social environment is gradually turning away from her as her obsession for her bird becomes her only purpose in life. Only her contact with Mabel turns out to be her last “social contact”. She has no goals or forges any future plans. Slowly but surely, she can draw less and less a line between her own and Mabel's life; these seem to be merging more and more with one another.
Ultimately, Helen Macdonald opts for therapy in which she realizes that naturalism is good for her soul , but is not a panacea for coping with grief and her everyday life.
Quotes
“(...) it was a journey into the underworld. A trip to a strange, cold place. But I came back from there as a different person. The hawk has changed me and, in a way, has reconciled me to death. The hawk was everything I wanted to be: a loner, self-controlled, free from grief and deaf to the hurts of life. "
“Although the year was beautiful - and in many ways very grim - I made a terrible mistake. I thought that I wanted to be just like my hawk: all alone, independent, dependent on no one and filled with an indescribable anger. I felt all of this naturally because of my father's death. I used the hawk as a mirror of myself and at some point felt more like a hawk than myself. In the end I learned: The history of nature is actually always our own story. The hawk has changed me and in a certain way reconciled me to death. "
Reviews
"Helen Macdonald achieved something that is very rare in literature: the absolutely realistic description of the relationship between a human being and the consciousness of an animal ... An incredible achievement, and Mabel is the star."
“With its grace, its outstanding, almost terrifying elegance, this book captivates the reader and never lets go of him. What a discovery! "
"A clairvoyant book about the interpretation of nature by humans."
Prizes and awards
- 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize
- 2014 Costa Book Award .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Newspaper article The Habicht was what I wanted to be by Andreas Isenschmid in the newspaper: DIE ZEIT No. 41/2015, October 8, 2015
- ↑ Review: H wie Habicht Review by Stefanie Flam on the DAS MILIEU website from October 1, 2015 (accessed on June 3, 2016)
- ↑ Presentation of the book Ullstein Verlag ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of Ullsteinverlag.de (accessed on May 26, 2016) (PDF)
- ↑ Article Neue Rundschau on the Neue Rundschau.de website (accessed on May 26, 2016)
- ↑ Presentation of the book at Ullstein Verlag on the Ullsteinverlag.de website (accessed on May 26, 2016)
- ↑ Nick Clark: Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction: Helen Macdonald wins with 'H is for Hawk' . The Independent. Retrieved November 10, 2014.
- ↑ Helen Macdonald wins Costa Book of the Year 2014 . BBC News. January 27, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2015.
Web links
- Death of the naturalist by Mark Cocker from June 17, 2015 on the style of new nature writing on the NewStaatesman website