num_pages: 288
description: A sweeping historical travelogue of the contentious border of France and Spain in the great tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Jan Morris With the Catalonia crisis making international headlines the unique cultural and geographic region bordering Spain and France has once again moved to the center of the world's attention. In The Savage Frontier  acclaimed author and journalist Matthew Carr uncovers the fascinating multilayered story of the Pyrenees regionat once a forbidding mountainous frontier zone of stunning beauty home to a unique culture and a site of sharp conflict between nations and empires. Carr follows the routes taken by monks soldiers poets pilgrims and refugees. He examines the people and events that have shaped the Pyrenees across the centuries with a cast of characters including Napoleon Hannibal and Charlemagne; the eccentric British climber Henry Russell; Francisco Sabat Llopart the Catalan anarchist who waged a lone war against the Franco regime across the Pyrenees for years after the civil war; Camino de Santiago pilgrims; and the cellist Pablo Casals who spent twenty-three years in exile only a few miles from the Spanish border to show his disgust and disapproval of the Spanish regime. The Savage Frontier is a book that will spark a new awareness and appreciation of one of the most haunting magical and dramatic landscapes on earth.
language: English
title: The Savage Frontier: The Pyrenees in History and the Imagination
publisher: The New Press