Thursday, 15 March 2018

On Travelogues and Travel Writing in Literature - VI


Thinner (1984), is a novel by Stephen King. In this thriller, an overweight executive appears to get away with vehicular manslaughter of an old man. The man’s surviving son, a traveling gypsy, touches the killer’s cheek and utters a curse: ‘‘Thinner.’’

Moscow 2042 (1986), is a dystopian time-travel novel by Vladimir Voinovich. Time travel reveals the bleak future of the Soviet Union, in a dystopian parody written during the glasnost (openness) period.

Lawrence Durrell’s island novels, or landscape books, are drawn from the Greek world, but they are far more than travelogues or catalogues of places to visit. Much like the travel literature of Norman Douglas and D. H. Lawrence, they recreate the ambience of places loved, the characters of people known, and the history and mythology of each unique island world. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus in special, takes the icing on the cake on Durrell’s oeuvre, describing the three years (1953–1956) he spent on the island of Cyprus.

Along the Ganges is an exhilarating travelogue by Ilija Trojanow. Ilija Trojanow is a German novelist and travel writer. Trojanow, being well-versed in Hindi, is the perfect mix of insider and outsider, who can see for himself, what makes India tick! In this gripping travelogue, Ilija Trojanow travels along the River Ganges, right from its originating source, where it breaks free from the eternal ice in the Himalayas, meandering its way to the great cities; he follows the river alternately by boat, by bus, and also on overcrowded trains.

Arabian Sands is a 1959 book by explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger. According to Sir John Glubb, ‘Wilfred Thesiger is perhaps the last, and certainly one of the greatest, of the British travellers among the Arabs . . . The narrative is vividly written, with a thousand little anecdotes and touches which bring back to any who have seen these countries every scene with the colour of real life.’

Not getting accustomed to the monotonous drudgery of everyday life in the West, and repulsed by the softness,  and rigidity of Western life, especially ‘the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets,’ Thesiger, (in the spirit of T. E. Lawrence,) sets out to explore the deserts of Arabia, traveling among peoples who had never seen a European. His now-classic account is invaluable to understanding the modern Middle East.

The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer: Close Encounters with Strangers by Eric Hansen is a fascinating read, with ‘perfect-pitch stories, mischievous, daring—perfect for the armchair traveler who wouldn't dare’!

Eric Hansen is an intrepid traveler with a keenly perceptive eye and an appreciation for the odd and unusual. He will go anywhere and try anything. Through it all he manages to capture the most revealing conversations and the most transporting moments in his travels, from the Maldives to Sacramento, from Cannes to Borneo and far beyond.

Hansen writes about the mind-altering experience of drinking kava in Vanuatu and about heartrending moments working at Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying Destitute in Calcutta. He joins a grieving husband searching for his dead wife's wedding ring at a crash site in the Borneo rain forest. He recounts his miraculous survival of Cyclone Tracy on a fishing boat off the north coast of Australia, and he befriends an elderly Russian woman who would prepare catered dinners for George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky in her tiny Manhattan kitchen while drug dealers were shot to death in the downstairs lobby.

He spends time with an ornithologist who studies endangered ants and the sex lives of banana slugs--and takes topless dancers on bird-watching expeditions. Each essay is a passionate experience of life refracted through the eyes and voice of a singularly evocative and original writer.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West was first published in 1942. This epic masterpiece is widely regarded as the most illuminating book to have been written on the former state of Yugoslavia.

Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West's classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern.

A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country's history as well as its daily life.

Chasing The Monsoon by Alexander Frater is a rain-travellogue of sorts! On 20th May the Indian summer monsoon will begin to envelop the country in two great wet arms, one coming from the east, the other from the west. They are untied over central India around 10th July, a date that can be calculated within seven or eight days. Frater aims to follow the monsoon, staying sometimes behind it, sometimes in front of it, and everywhere watching the impact of this extraordinary phenomenon.

During the anxious period of waiting, the weather forecaster is king, consulted by pie-crested cockatoos, and a joyful period ensues: there is a period of promiscuity, and scandals proliferate. Frater's journey will take him to Bangkok and the cowboy town on the Thai-Malaysian border to Rangoon and Akyab in Burma (where the front funnels up between the mountains and the sea).

The object of his travels is to get a personal gauge of the Indian monsoon and to culminate his wanderings under the ceaseless showers of Cherrapunji.

His travelogue is doubtlessly the last word on literary monsoon manias. Scheduling his travels to suit the imprecision of wayward nimbus clouds, the writer succeeds with finesse in making a religion of rain.

From a cocktail of reviews from -

Gale/Routledge/goodreads/Amazon/IndiaToday/googlebooks
Image credits: TravelTriangle.Com

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