Final Fire

See the world through a photographer’s eyes Final Fire is a companion piece to Mitchell’s much-praised 2004 memoir, The Molly Fire, a finalist for both the Writers’ Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction, and a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. Nearly a half century ago, Mitchell abandoned a safe and secure academic career to become a “cowboy” with a camera and a keyboard. While he has always kept one foot planted firmly in the arts, as a working photographer his search for adventure took him through the Americas, into the High Arctic, across Europe, on to the Middle East, India, and the Far East. He photographed famous athletes, musicians, actors, politicians, revolutionaries, and more than a few criminals. The sum of these scary, strange, heartrending, and funny episodes is one man’s prescription for how to live in a bizarre and, best of all, never boring world. It is also a book about loss. Mitchell reflects on the invention of photography and its transformative effect on world culture and pays tribute to fellow photographers who led remarkable and frequently obsessive lives.

‘You need to be less black and white ... see the grey between the two; the smoke that hides the mirrors. This life; this strange, wonderful and frankly incredulous life we lead cannot be so starkly viewed. If you believe in black, then you must, by the very laws of logic, believe in white. However, if you invest your belief in neither absolutes and let yourself consider that which lies between … the shifting shades that cannot be defined, then and only then will you become receptive to the endless possibilities that this life has to offer.’ The tenth book in the Isle of Dreams series sees a return to life in the Valley of the Ri, following the lives of the ever-growing family of De Winters.