{"product_id":"a-flat-place-moving-through-empty-landscapes-naming-complex-trauma-9781685890247","title":"A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Sharply, subtly, and very movingly, \u003c\/b\u003e Masud thinks \u003ci\u003ewith\u003c\/i\u003e places, seeking as she does to find a way back into, and then out of, the traumas of her early life.\" - Robert Macfarlane, author of \u003ci\u003eUnderland: A Deep Time Journey \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eA surprising and lyrical journey--part memoir, part nature book--meditating on the meaning of \"flatness\" and its literary tradition to find ways to understand ourselves and our trauma in one of nature's most undervalued wonders.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor readers of Robert Macfarlane. G. Sebald's \u003ci\u003eRings of Saturn\u003c\/i\u003e, Amy Liptrot's \u003ci\u003eThe Outrun\u003c\/i\u003e, and Richard Mabey's \u003ci\u003eNature Cure\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDoes the concept of \"flat\" have an undeservedly bad rap? There are centuries' worth of adoration for rolling hills and dramatic, mountainous landscapes. In contrast, flat landscapes are forgettable and seemingly unworthy of poetic or artistic attention. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNoreen suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder: the product of a profoundly disrupted and unstable childhood. It flattens her emotions, blanks out parts of her memory, and colours her world with anxiety. Undertaking a pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands, seeking solace and belonging, she weaves her impressions of the natural world with poetry, folklore and history, and with recollections of her own early life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNoreen's British-Pakistani heritage makes her a partial outsider in these landscapes: both coloniser and colonised, inheritor and dispossessed. Here violence lies beneath the fantasy of pastoral innocence, and histories of harm are interwoven with nature's power to heal. Here, as in her own family history, are many stories that resist the telling. She pursues these paradoxes fearlessly across the flat, haunted spaces she loves, offering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of the land beneath her feet. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMasud combines memoir, nature writing, and literary reflection to explore what can be drawn from these powerful places, and to understand her own experience of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress, as well as grief and loss. \u003ci\u003eA Flat Place\u003c\/i\u003e is a book that drives to the heart of what it means to experience place -- bodily and psychologically -- and the healing properties of literature and landscape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Melville House Publishing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/06\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781685890247\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.25lbs","brand":"Noreen Masud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42835625279669,"sku":"9781685890247","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_e7d83d11-6e01-4a7e-a4f5-ea77a53e9907.jpg?v=1681224551","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/a-flat-place-moving-through-empty-landscapes-naming-complex-trauma-9781685890247","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}