Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Deserts of Africa
Once considered the `dark continent` in the imagination of the West, Africa is now recognized as the cradle of mankind. It is a land of overwhelming complexity and wealth, both culturally and geographically. Yet its formidable deserts remain largely unexplored. Geographer and photographer Michael Martin`s images of these enormous, apparently barren, stretches of land reveal
I Have Seen The World Begin
There is no greater misunderstanding than to think that one travels alone. On this epic journey through China, Cambodia and Vietnam, political columnist Carsten Jensen travels in order to find out about the Tiananmen Square massacre, the killing fields of Cambodia and the operations of Khmer Rouge. His constant questioning makes him friends and enemies,
Ports Of Call
A graceful story of love across an insuperable gulf and a powerful allegory for the conflict that has beset the Middle East for the last half century. To call your son Ossyane is like calling him Rebellion. For Ossyane`s father it is a gesture of protest by an excited Ottoman prince, for Ossyane himself it
Baltasar and Blimunda
When King and Church exercise absolute power what happens to the dreams of ordinary people? In early eighteenth century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost a hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where her mother
Jacques Tati His Life & Art
The full story of one of France`s greatest cinema legends, a clown whose film-making innovation was to turn everyday life into an art form.Jacques Tati`s Monsieur Hulot, unmistakable with his pipe, brolly and striped socks, was a creation of slapstick genius that made audiences around the world laugh at the sheer absurdity of life. This
The Fish Can Sing
The Fish Can Sing is the 1957 modern classic of Icelandic fiction from celebrated novelist Halldรณr Laxness; a tender coming-of-age story of a boy and a nation, dragged unwillingly into the modern world.Abandoned as a baby, รlfgrรญmur is content to spend his days as a fisherman living in the turf cottage outside Reykjavรญk with the
Death and the Penguin
In today`s Ukraine, all that stands between one man and murder by the mafia is a penguin.Viktor is an aspiring writer with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the
Virago Book of Women Travellers
The Virago Book of Women Travellers is an anthology compiled from three hundred years of female wanderlust, in search of pleasure and peril. Extracts have been taken from the writings of Gertrude Bell, Isabelle Eberhardt, Rose Macaulay, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Dervla Murphy, Freya Stark, Vita Sackville West, Mary Wollstonecraft and many more.Their prose rich
The Hacienda: My Venezuelan Years
At just 17 the author went to live on her new husband`s hacienda deep in the Venezuelan Andes. There her husband (a bank robber and aristocrat) more or less leaves her to fend for herself. She lived for seven years among the people of the area, grew to love them and learned the names for
A House in Sicily
Near Mount Etna in Sicily lies Casa Cuseni, a beautiful house built in golden stone – and the home which Daphne Phelps was astonished to find she had inherited in 1947. At the age of 34, war-weary from working as a psychiatric social worker, with barely any Italian, and precious little money, she plunged into
Affinity
Set in and around the women`s prison at Milbank in the 1870`s , AFFINITY is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale. Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some `good work`
Desert Flower
Waris Dirie (the name means desert flower) lives a double life – by day she is a famous model and UN spokeswoman on women`s rights in Africa, at night she dreams of her native Somalia. Waris, one of 12 children, was born into a traditional family of desert nomads in East Africa. She remembers her
Greene On Capri
When friends die, one`s own credentials change: one becomes a survivor. Graham Greene has already had biographers, one of whom has served him mightily. Yet I hope that there is room for the remembrance of a friend who knew him – not wisely, perhaps, but fairly well – on an island that was “not his
Fire Under the Snow
In 1992 the Venerable Palden Gyatso was released after thirty-three years of imprisonment by Chinese forces in Tibet. He fled across the Himalayas to India, smuggling with him the instruments of his torture. This powerful text is the story of his life and irrefutable testimony to the appalling suffering of the Tibetan nation at the
Fingersmith
London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves – fingersmiths – under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her `family`. But from the moment she draws breath, Sue`s fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.
African Trilogy
During the 1970s and 1980s, Peter Matthiessen took part in a number of expeditions to Africa, witnessing first-hand the continent`s many and diverse peoples and wildlife. The fruits of these journeys are three of the most impressive essays on the natural world of the late twentieth century. The Tree where Man Was Born documents wild
Perfect Lives
In an English seaside town, lovers and children, young men and middle-aged women, weave in and out of each other`s lives and stories. A mother is tormented by her daughter`s tattoo; another only pretends to love her baby. A wife stalks her husband and his new lover; a broken egg through a letterbox tells a
Barcelona
“Barcelona is an attempt at total history: Social, political , cultural, economic ยฟ Hughes includes descriptions of buildings – and he is as good on the bony grandeur of Catalan gothic as he is on the bulbous undulations of Gaudi – analyses of poems, precise evocations of social conditions ยฟ and accounts of extraordinary people
Amsterdam: A brief life of the city
A magnet for trade and travellers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank. In this fascinating examination of the city`s soul, part history, part travel guide,
