Leshp - City of the Curious Squid
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An Island of the Discworld
Leshp is also an appropriate topic for a Squidoo lens, because of its apparent inhabitants... a city of strange architecture, with curious and unsettling designs of creatures with eyes and tentacles. Squid, in fact. Even more factually, the Curious Squid. The island spends most of its time deep under water, rising sporadically due to volcanic acticity (the underside of the island is air-filled pumice stone and fills slowly with gas).
The island of Leshp rises from the ocean floor at the beginning of the story - practically under two fishing boats. One belongs to a fisherman from desert Klatch (uh, desert Klatch that is also on the coast) and one boat hails from the port of the stinking and capitalist metropolis of Ank-Morpork (loosely based on London). Naturally, both claim the island for their respective homelands and diplomacy, violence, honorary degrees, racism, war and the biggest arrest in history ensues.
"...Curious Squid, so called because, as well as being squid, they were curious. That is to say, their curiosity was the curious thing about them."
Have you read Jingo?
Jingo is the twenty-first novel by Terry Pratchett, one of his Discworld series, published in 1997.
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For the serious empire-builder there was no such thing as a final frontier.
Jingo - Read the Book
A Novel of war, National Pride, Mobs and Governments. And Squid.
He shrugged. It wasn't his world, thank goodness."
Read more to meet 71-hour Ahmed, Nobby Nobbs, Vimes and the Klatchian Prince...
Leshp, and the multiple claimants and their willingness to go to war over one little island, is based on one or more of the islands of Fernandiea, R'lyeh and Fernando Poo . The last two are mostly fictional, the first very real. Read on to learn more about each...
Jingo: Stage Adaptation (Discworld)
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Terry Pratchett is a phenomenon unto himself. Never read a Discworld book? The closest comparison might be Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with its uniquely British sense of the absurd, and side-splitting, smart humor. Jingo is the 20th of Pratchett's Discworld novels, and the fourth to feature the City Guard of Ankh-Morpork. As Jingo begins, an island suddenly rises between Ankh-Morpork and Al-Khali, capital of Klatch. Both cities claim it. Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, has failed to convince the Ruling Council that force is a bad idea, despite reminding them that they have no army, and "I believe one of those is generally considered vital to the successful prosecution of a war." Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch, has to find out who shot the Klatchian envoy, Prince Khufurah, and set fire to their embassy, before war breaks out.
If an island appeared today... what do you think would happen?
How many countries would lay claim to it?
"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."
Would posturing and potential war break out if an island rose from the ocean today?
Oh yes. No country is going to let another country have new territory/advantage/fishing rights.
No. They'd be a bit more sensible about it. Maybe divide it like Antarctica.
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Solid Jackson
The Fishermen
Laying claim for their country
The two fishermen out fishing, on the night that Leshp rose, were Morporkian Solid Jackson and Klatchian Greasy Arif. Both were after the Curious Squid, both had brought their sons, and both then proceeded to embarrass them with good old National mutual prejudice.
Curious Squid
The opening of Jingo - in which Leshp rises
Shortly after they got curious about the lantern that Solid had hung over the stern of his boat, they started to become curious about the way in which various of their number suddenly van-ished skyward with a splash. Some of them even became curious--very briefly curious--about the sharp barbed thing that was coming very quickly toward them. The Curious Squid were extremely curious. Unfortunately, they weren't very good at making connections.
It was a very long way to this fishing ground, but for Solid the trip was usually well worth it. The Curious Squid were very small, harmless, difficult to find and reckoned by connoisseurs to have the foulest taste of any creature in the world. This made them very much in demand in a certain kind of restaurant where highly skilled chefs made, with great care, dishes containing no trace of the squid whatsoever.
Solid Jackson's problem was that tonight, a moonless night in the spawning season, when the squid were especially curious about everything, the chef seemed to have been at work on the sea itself. There was not a single interested eyeball to be seen. There weren't any other fish either, and usually there were a few attracted to the light. He'd caught sight of one. It had been making through the water extremely fast in a straight line.
- A Text Excerpt from Jingo by Terry Pratchett
- You can read the rest of the chapter at HarperCollins
The Circle Sea
The location of Leshp
Leshp is situated in the Circle Sea, which lies between Ankh-Morpork and Al-Khali in Klatch. It opens turnwise to the Rim Ocean. It is, as you can see, circular in shape, and bordered by various important locations (both to varous plots and in the economy and politics of the Discworld ) such as Klatch, Ephebe, Tsort, Djelibeybi (Pyramids), Omnia (Small Gods ) .
Image from the Map of the Discworld (see below)
The Discworld
Turtles all the way down
The Discworld is a flat world that rids on the backs of four elephants, who stand on the back of an enormous, comet-pocked turtle. Being round and flat, directions are ruled by the strength of magic, which is strongest at the Hub mountains and weaker on the Rim (local feature of note: the Rimfall). The polar regions are at the center (Hubwise).
Buy the Discworld Mapp. Never Get Lost Again*
"I said there would never be a map of the Discworld. This is it." ~Pratchett
The Discworld Mapp
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*we lied about the getting lost.
And then it sank again...
"*Veni, vici*...Vetinari."
Discworld Stamps: Leshp
Custom made commemorative stamps fom the Discworld Emporium
Leshp Archive Proof Sheet
A5 archive proof issued to mark the retirement of the Leshp commemorative one dollar stamp.
Released: 11 June 2007
Discworld stamps were first created in 2004, and in 2008 were given official recognition when the Philatelic Department of the British Library, a division of the British Museum, decided to collate a collection of Discworld stamps for posterity.
The eBay search doesn't seem to work for the stamps, for some reason - but trust me, they are there. Just click through and search 'Leshp'!
More about Jingo
Reviews and analysis
- Jingo - Television Tropes & Idioms
- The 'Discworld Jingo' trope as used in popular culture, with a list of examples from all media.
- The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Jingo
- Terry Pratchett's work is full of references, allusions, parodies and in-jokes. Hundreds of such references have been collected in the Annotated Pratchett File (APF). This page is part of the on-line version of the APF and contains all the annotations for the book "Jingo".
- Jingo (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- 21st novel - 4th City Watch story
Outline
Characters
Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Locations
Ankh-Morpork
Klatch
Motifs
War, diplomacy
More Pratchett Book Reviews
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Guestbook
Would you like to live on Leshp?
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LAST WORD:
Vetinari pulled the ultimate Xanatos gambit. And he hardly had to do anything.
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Edutopia
Jan 2, 2012 @ 7:27 am | delete
- Great lens, you've put quite a bit of effort into this page.
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tembrooke Mar 28, 2011 @ 9:15 am | delete
- I had no idea there were Discworld stamps! That is so cool!
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Peregrina
Nov 8, 2010 @ 2:10 pm | delete
- This is great! That's interesting about the actual historical disappearing island--I had no idea.
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JaguarJulie Jun 26, 2010 @ 6:21 am | delete
- Good day my dear from one curious squid to another. How do you pronounce that ? Such a creative page, wow!
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Flynn_the_Cat
Jun 29, 2010 @ 3:16 am | delete
- Lesshh-p! Pratchett describes it " sounds like its got its teeth out"
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