Haunts of the Black Masseur The Swimmer as Hero Charles Sprawson		$19.95 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-3539-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3539-9
A lustrous examination of life in the water from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Esther Williams. "Packed with fascinating tales of swimming exploits in history and literature and with accounts of immersion in lochs, fjords, straits, and torrents all over the world, Sprawson's splendid and wholly original book is as zestful as a plunge in champagne." —Iris Murdoch, New York Review of Books "Sprawson brings alive on the page the pleasures of water and of measuring oneself against it. Reading Haunts of the Black Masseur is like standing beside a cool pool on a steamy summer day; the temptation to leap in is irresistible." —Washington Post Book World "For all the cascade of comic, eccentric, sometimes touching detail, it is the submarine presence of Sprawson's own personality which creates this book's strangely mesmeric quality. On the surface, Haunts of the Black Masseur, which is fluently and elegantly written, is a descriptive work but underneath, we feel, it is the product of an obsession." —New Yorker Charles Sprawson lives in London. He recently swam the Hellespont. 328 pages | 21 black-and-white photographs | 5-7/8 x 9 | 2000