The Dictionary of Lost Words - A Novel

Pip Williams

Ballantine Books

2021

400 páginas

13h 20m

ISBN-10: 0593160193

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the "Scriptorium," a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word "bondmaid" flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect words that show women in a more positive light.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams's experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

Resenhas (4)

4 (Muito bom)

Encantador

Conta a história do primeiro dicionário de oxford, sua equipe e a pequena Esme que acompanhava o pai no trabalho e se apaixona por palavras.
Ao longo desta ficção histórica vamos acompanhando a vida da Esme, sua relação com as palavras e seus significados.
Começa um pouco lento, mas com o passar dos anos no livro, vai ficando mais interessante, passando pelo movimento das sufragistas e da primeira guerra. O final foi emocionante!