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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solitary Dane wanders the mysterious Far East, 20 Feb 2003
"The lone traveller is the most dependent of all, because he has need of everybody and no one has need of him."So notes Carsten Jensen in I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN, his narrative account of his journey of discovery through China, Cambodia and Vietnam during the early 90s. Jensen begins his travelogue in Beijing, but quickly moves on to Shanghai, from which he travels by boat up the Yangtse River, then by rail and bus, into southeastern China near the border of Myanmar (Burma). A constant thread is the state of the country and its inhabitants, individually and collectively, post-Tiananmen Square. Then it's on to Cambodia, a country yet to recover from the cruel self-immolation imposed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge minions..." And lastly, Vietnam, with which the author is obviously entranced, and the reader with him. Much of Carsten's enthrallment is with the country's women - Tam, Kim and Scent of Spring in particular. It's with the first that he has a physical relationship... Whether Jensen is describing China's Tiger Leap Gorge, Shanghai's New Year fireworks celebration, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh's horrific Security Prison 21, Vietnam's Hanoi ("like a wood with streets"), the royal tombs at Hue, or Dien Bien Phu, the graveyard of French colonialism in Southeast Asia, his magnificent prose transports you there. I was tempted to award I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN five stars, but am prevented from doing so by what I consider to be a significant omission. There's no photo section. What were the publisher and the author thinking? Having finished the book, I now want to visit Vietnam, a country I really had no desire to visit before. If a travel essay can accomplish this for any destination, it's very good indeed.
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