The Accidental Indies

By: Robert Finley

Narrated by: Julian Casey

At once moving and lyrical, The Accidental Indies is a tale in which we join Christopher Columbus on a fantastical voyage through western seas and Western imagination. Robert Finley imagines, sings, charts, and paints the story of Columbus' problematic 1492 expedition to the Caribbean, creating a world that is as vivid and compelling as the explorer's own voyage to the misnamed "Indies".

It is a journey through wondrous words that begins with Columbus' earliest explorations when he first "tests the heft and roundness of this earth against his infant head" by stepping from the edge of his rocking cradle to come up short on the boards of the nursery floor. Finley charts a course for us through the days at sea, through the voyage itself, its records and commentaries, into the fraught territory of Columbus' imaginary "Indies" and the representation of this New World on his return to Spain.

This incisive and luminescent story, scrupulously grounded in 16th-century sources, illuminates the power that “naming” has to create a world - in this case a world still haunted by being the accidental Indies. It is a book about how we perceive and represent the world around us, about the creative and destructive power of language. Through its elaboration of the rich and lively ironies of the Columbus story, The Accidental Indies looks at the nature of storytelling itself.

©2000 MicGill-Queen's University Press (P)2021 McGill-Queen’s University Press

Critic reviews

“With the details of seaman ship and sailing culture also as authentic as possible, the book is in many respects a rigorous imaging of what it might have been like to really be there, without the knowledge and prejudices of today.” (University of Toronto Quarterly)

“A remarkable achievement, an impeccably researched and engagingly inquisitive hybrid, as lovely and articulate as New World Parrot.” (Malahat Review)

“Finley appropriates and recasts the Columbus myth in order to provide a thought-provoking commentary on the possessive and interpretative power of words, legends, and visions.” (Publishers Weekly)