A poet and journalist looks back on a remarkable journey from Turkey to Nepal in 1978, when the region was on the brink of massive transformation.In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail — a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme,...

Phrases, idioms, and clichés—why do we say the things we say? Watch Your Tongue explores weird and wonderful everyday sayings and what they reveal about us.Do you ever wonder why you shouldn’t have a cow but you should seize a bull by its horns? Who has the better reputation in language—cats or dogs? Do you sometimes feel that our speech is all smoke and mirrors or that our expressions simply make no sense?In Watch Your Tongue...

Harry Abley was a nightmare of a father: depressive, self-absorbed, unpredictable, emotionally unstable. He was also a dream of a father: gentle, courageous, artistically gifted. Mark Abley, his only child, grew up in the shadow of music and mental illness. How he came to terms with this divided legacy, and how he learned to be a man in the absence of a traditional masculine role model, are central to this beautifully written memoir.This extraordinary story will speak to all those ...

We are exhausted. We are overwhelmed. Worse, we are numb. No matter what screen you’re getting your news and information from, the barrage is constant, horrific and always urgent: Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, climate change, ecological devastation, economic collapse, AI, toxic social media…and of course Donald Trump and all he represents. Authoritarian leaders and genocidal regimes have always found numbness a desirable goal, as it narrows the possibilities for revolt. Shocked and awed int...

Whether on the other side of the world or in our own backyard, languages everywhere are fading into oblivion. Mark Abley explores what the human family stands to lose — and explains why some endangered languages continue to thrive.Within the next couple of generations, most of the world’s 6000 languages will vanish, due mainly to the unstoppable tide of English. With an open mind and a well-worn passport, award-winning journalist and poet Mark Abley tells entertaining and vital sto...

The second edition of Mark Abley’s acclaimed creative biography, revised and expanded with a new introduction by the author. When he died in 1947, Duncan Campbell Scott was revered as one of his country’s finest poets and honoured as a devoted civil servant. Today, because of his work as head of the Department of Indian Affairs, he's widely considered one of history's worst Canadians. When word of this reaches Scott's ghost, he returns to the land of the living to ask poet and journalist M...

The Prodigal Tongue takes a look at the wild, wacky and sometimes baffling road our language–English and others–is taking in its evolution. Where in the world will it end up?!Mark Abley, author of Spoken Here, has created an entertaining and informative exploration of the way that languages–English, Japanese, French, Arabic and other major tongues–are likely to transform and be transformed by their speakers during the twenty-first century. Grammar ...

A poet and journalist looks back on a remarkable journey from Turkey to Nepal in 1978, when the region was on the brink of massive transformation.In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail — a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme,...