American Interior: The quixotic journey of John Evans, his search for a lost tribe and how, fuelled by fantasy and (possibly) booze, he accidentally annexed a third of North America

Product Description

The quixotic journey of John Evans, his search for a lost tribe and how, fuelled by fantasy and (possibly) booze, he accidentally annexed a third of North America.

In 2012 Gruff Rhys set off on an Investigative Concert Tour™ to retrace the footsteps of explorer and fellow Welshman John Evans. In 1792, Evans had travelled to America on a quest to find a legendary tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans. Two hundred years later, Gruff sought to illuminate Evans's curious fate, with a guitar in one hand and, in the other, a handmade felt avatar of this perhaps foolhardy near ancestor. American Interior is the story of these twin odysseys - of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts.

'A joyous and poignant celebration of the mythical and the real.' Caught by the River

'Charming and entertainingly written.' Independent

'Exuberant, entertaining . . . alive to the quixotic nature of Evans' quest, while offering a sideways look at the nexus between history and myth.' Financial Times

'A story about gullibility, contradiction, ambition, inexplicable wanderlust and the fact that the past - whether mythical or not - is not a sealed-off reality, but something tangled up in the present. Brilliantly life-affirming.' Guardian

'A true original.' Evening Standard