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''Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-Life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers'' is a highly influential novel by Henry Williamson, first published in 1927 by G.P. Putnam's Sons with an introduction by the Hon. Sir John Fortescue. It won the Hawthornden Prize in 1928 and remains Willamson's best-known and most popular work,〔Stade and Karbiener (eds). ''Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, Volume 2'', 2009, p.522〕 having never been out of print since first publication.〔Gavron, J. "Introduction" to ''Tarka the Otter'', Penguin, 2009, v (all subsequent page references refer to this edition)〕 As its title suggests, the novel describes the life of an otter, along with a detailed observation of its habitat in the country of the River Taw and River Torridge in North Devon (the "Two Rivers"); the name "Tarka" is said by Williamson to mean "Wandering as Water" (p. 10). Though often now characterised as a children's book, ''Tarka'' has influenced literary figures as diverse as Ted Hughes and Rachel Carson. ==Plot summary, style== The book is separated into two main parts, "The First Year" and "The Last Year". It begins shortly before the birth of Tarka in an otter holt on the River Torridge, near the Rolle Canal aqueduct on the Beam estate. After a period learning to swim and hunt, and losing a sibling in a trap, he is separated from his mother and wanders around North Devon alone. His first mate is an elderly otter called Greymuzzle, who is killed during Tarka's first winter, which is unusually harsh. In his second year, he fathers a litter of cubs with his second mate, White-tip. Throughout the book Williamson juxtaposes Tarka with his main enemy, the local otter hunt, and particularly the pied hound Deadlock, "the truest marking-hound in the country of the Two Rivers" (p. 23). The book ends with a climactic nine-hour hunt of Tarka by the pack, and a confrontation between Tarka and Deadlock. Williamson's attitude to the hunt is somewhat ambivalent: while admiring them for their own regard for and knowledge of the otter, and despite being personally friendly with his local hunt, the violence and cruelty of some of his descriptions of hunting is clear.〔Gavron, 2009, xi〕 Locations featured in the book include Braunton Burrows, the clay pits at Marland, Morte Point, Hoar Oak Water and the Chains. The book begins and ends in the vicinity of Torrington. Williamson wrote with a descriptive style which some, such as Ted Hughes, have characterised as poetic: in his memorial address for Williamson, quoted by Roger Deakin in his book ''Waterlog'', Hughes described him as "one of the truest English poets of his generation".〔Quoted in Deakin, R. ''Waterlog'', Random House, 2009, p.84〕 His writing is also characterised by a lack of sentimentality about the animals it describes; Williamson is generally careful to avoid anthropomorphising them and rarely attempts to present any but their most basic or instinctual mental processes.〔Hogan, W. ''Animals in Young Adult Fiction'', 2009, p.7〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tarka the Otter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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