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Updated: 10 May 2003 |
ISBN 0-0065-4577-7
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A ‘sampler’ book from one of the best known of travel writers, author of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Eric Newby.
Each new chapter offers a glimpse of some part of the world, perhaps exotic-seeming to someone from this part of the world (Kabul, the Ganges, Jordan, Yucatan) or perhaps ordinary (Australia, Hong Kong, Fiji). In either case, each short – and I do mean short – chapter feels like a heavily edited-down version of a much longer essay. They will take you there for a brief taste of what the traveller saw, but leave you wishing for the full text. A fair collection of photographs are included. Oddly, there is by no means a one-to-one correspondence between the photographs and the text, but I guess that just makes the whole thing that much more alluring.
Be aware that this is not investigative journalism, however. Newby’s observations of, say, Fiji, are as completely superficial as any "four countries and ten cities in five days" Kontiki tour.
‘Fijians were charming and good-humoured…. They were also generous to a degree which might be regarded as excessive: an ancient custom known as kerekere obliged a Fijian to hand over any possession fancied by another Fijian, who simply had to ask for it. This made it impossible for them to engage in shopkeeping….’ – p. 148
This kind of patronising sentimentality from selectively blind Europeans – Theroux’s Happy Isles is the same – annoys the hell out of me. I could equally well point to the obvious common motivational background behind three armed coups and claim that the whole damn lot of them are lazy, bigoted, xenophobic barbarians. Although there may be some truth in the assertion that they’ll never achieve anything much until they deposit their tribalism in a museum, where it belongs, and get on with being cosmopolitan like the rest of us, the latter view is no more representative – or "accurate" in any meaningful sense – than the indulgent drivel of passing travel writers.
For my money, the chapter set on the Wakwayowkastic River in Canada was the most intriguing. (Now how could I ...?)
Recommendation: Well written by someone who is obviously a master of his craft. Recommended.
Look and Feel: My edition is the usual matt-finish paperback. Photographs are matt b&w, and the reproduction somewhat grainy.
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