‘I breathed in the splendid, pure air. From now on I was another man.’
‘[The Tahitians] taught me many things about the science of living… and about the art of being happy. Above all they made me know myself better.’
Memoir / Travel Journal
Noa-Noa
The Tahitian Journal
Paul Gauguin
Forthcoming 2027
Translated by Paul Keegan
Parallel text, with woodblock prints and engravings
Gauguin’s extraordinary chronicle of his life in the South Seas, in a new translation by Paul Keegan, illustrated with images by Gauguin.
Noa-Noa is the journal of Gauguin’s sojourn in Tahiti and his tumultuous marriage to a young Tahitian – a fusion of travelogue, artistic manifesto and confessional, written both to contextualise his radical new paintings for a sceptical Parisian public and to document his quest for an existence beyond the Western world. The journal reveals the ambivalence of his legendary immersion in Tahitian culture.
Paul Keegan’s new translation is the first parallel-text edition of Noa-Noa: it includes the original French alongside the English version, with woodblock prints and engravings made by Gauguin in Tahiti.
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