Haunts Of The Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero - Softcover

"Part social and cultural history, and part personal credo, Haunts of the Black Masseur is an exhilarating plunge into some of the deepest pools inside our heads" (J G Ballard Daily Telegraph)

"This splendid and wholly original book is as zestful as a plunge in champagne" (Iris Murdoch New York Times Book Review)

"A wholly original idea...a brilliant translation of a singular passion" (Alan Ross Times Literary Supplement)

"A devoted and luminously romantic history of swimming" (Guardian)

"One wants to put it down - and jump straight into the pool" (Independent)

Haunts of the Black Masseur is a dazzling introduction to the great swimming heroes: Byron leaping into the surf at Shelley's beach funeral, Hart Crane, swallow-diving to his death in the Bay of Mexico, Ulysses, Leander, Weismuller and many more. In lively prose bursting with anecdote, Charles Sprawson leads us into a watery world populated by lithe demi-Gods – one that has obsessed humans from the ancient Greeks and Romans, to Yeats, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald and David Hockney.

Original, enticing and dripping with references to literature, film, art and Olympic history, this cult swimming classic pays sparkling tribute to water and the cultural meanings we attach to it.