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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Shortlisted for the Esquire/Apple/Waterstone’s Non-Fiction Award
Book Description
‘I’m looking for the people who have always been there, and belong to the places where they live’ In this rich and fascinating second volume of memoirs, following the classic I Came, I Saw, Norman Lewis takes us from Enfield to Guatemala via Brazil and to Peru by way of Braintree, heartland of the paranormal, not to mention Vietnam, Burma, Spain, Cuba, Sicily and India. He recounts his wartime career, his life abroad and at home and his reminiscences of Ian Fleming and Ernest Hemingway with his characteristic humour, sharp eye for detail and keen delight in the absurd. ‘He is a specialist in communicating his own peculiar sense of the futilities of travel, even when he was investigating in the utmost discomfort and difficulty a business as terrible as the genocide of the Brazilian Indians. He never wastes time on being indignant. But he is frequently surprising’ John Bayley, London Review of Books ‘He is a rare witness to our century and to the larcenies we have committed in remote places, hoping not to be seen. He has made, in his quiet way, an enduring impact on this planet. But he can be read for giggles, too’ Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph ‘Vintage Norman Lewis; the light lash of his humour, his sniffer-dog’s nose for the quirky, the lyrical brilliance of his prose’ Guardian ‘One of the greatest – and most egotistical – travel writers of our age’ Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Lewis begins this volume with a description of a chance encounter in the elegant dining car of a train in pre-war Italy, which would lead to a friendship spanning decades.
This familiar Lewis combination of a world now disappeared and the importance of genuine friendships, all described in his economic but intensly lyrical style make for a book that is truly engrossing.
Despite a lifetime of describing events and people from across the world, Lewis avoids both cynicism (except when dealing with authoritarians) or wide eyed wonder. His encounters with profound brutalities in Guatemala or Indo China are described with as much care for the details as are the idiosyncracies of his housekeeper or for that matter those of Jonathon Cape and any number of the great and good.
His reporter's technique is much in evidence here, obtaining unauthorized access to where a country's real stories are taking place. This book should be required reading on every journalist's training course, if nothing else for its language which is throughout both simple and scintillating.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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5 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Civilised urbane man and travel writer extraordinaire
6 Aug 2000
Format:Hardcover
At the end of this splendid autobiographical travel book, the author explains his compulsion to travel to his Brahmin companion "It's the pull of the world. I spent most of my childhood on my own, and some of it was in the mountains of Wales. I would go exploring with the idea in my head that the farther I was from home the better it would be. The next valley would always be wilder. The lake would be bottomless, and I would find a mysterious ruin, and there would be ravens instead of crows in all the trees. Now it's not just the Black Mountains of Dyfed, but the world." In this book that pull takes him to a bleak, windswept ancient fort in a bay in South West Wales where he writes; to Cuba where he meets an expatriate American official executioner, former Macy employee; to the exquisite countryside of Vietnam of the 1950's; to Bangkok and its sex industry; to Brazil and, in concert with one of the great photo-journalists in history Don McCullin, recalls their expose to the world of the genocide against tribal peoples of Brazil, and demonstrates the power of writing and the good that can come therefrom. His opinions include his opposition to the destructiveness of Protestant fundamentalist sects as missionaries and disdain for the barbarians of Essex in the 1960's riding to the local hunt willy nilly over gardens. His insights are sometimes revalatory - he analyses some speeches of Castro and finds them sprinkled with jokes and quotes from Burke, Rousseau, Juvenal, and Shakespeare and claims Castro is the greatest orator since Demosthenes. This contrasts remarkably with the impression I gained from the American press over the years who simply described his speeches as interminable and boring. What a difference an open mind can make to a perspective on the world. His travel companions included Lord Snowden who is revealed somewhat as a spoiled and moody but talented adolescent. His writing skill I would compare to Somerset Maugham but without the snobbery and sarcasm. He is one of the most graceful and skilled travel writers in the language. Pervading all is his sense of graciousness, humanity, and generosity of spirit. The World, The World is a wonderful read.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A great man
26 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
I discovered Norman Lewis through an article by that other great travel writer Pico Iyer in his "Tropical Classical" collection. "The World, the World" is an excellent introduction to an extraordinary travel writer, man whose life has to be read about to be believed. This is a man totally in tune with his times both at home and abroad (his description of his English village is as powerful as his writing on Cuba and the plight of the Amazonian Indians). There's also a great deal of humour here, particularly when Lewis describes his travels with Lord Snowden in Peru. Highly recommended.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
A true travelers wonderful odyssey
4 Jan 1999
Format:Hardcover
What a treat this book was! I discovered Norman Lewis years ago --and have read most of his novels (which I will now go back and re-read). He makes travel as exciting and involving as, of course, it is and along with Pico Iyer makes everyday that I sit behind my desk or hit my computer one less day of adventure or learning. He manages to be so modest about his achievements and his innante curiousity while presenting a panorama of travel thst is as interesting as any travle writing I have ever read --and it makes you thirst for more and more detail about his experiences throughout the world..highly recommend this for anyone who has the slightest essence of wanderlust!
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