- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus (17 July 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0701175117
- ISBN-13: 978-0701175115
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,354,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Description
The breakout novel from a brilliant British-Sudanese novelist writing cleverly, wittily and movingly about being an outsider inside Europe.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Yasin is driving through Europe in a dilapidated Peugeot 504 with his seven-year-old son Leo. He's not sure where they're going. He just knows he's thirty-seven years old, his wife is about to divorce him and this is his last chance to explain to his son who he is and where he comes from. The problem is that Yasin isn't sure of the answer to these questions himself. Born in the Sudan to an English mother and an Arab father, he has two passports but no national identity. When he met his English wife, he thought that love could transcend borders. Now he is coming to see that, wherever you travel, you take the ghosts of your past with you. As he and Leo drift through Germany to Paris in search of Europe's history, and onwards via Provence to Spain to find Yasin's ex-lover and his lost brother, Yasin reflects on the tragic-comic ironies of his displaced life and the kind of mixed-up world his son will inhabit. When they finally wash up on the Costa Brava, once the border between the Christian and Muslim worlds, he and Leo are on the verge of separation but the brink of understanding.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This one came to me recommended by a friend as I have to admit I had never heard of this writer before. I was grabbed from page one and just wanted to keep reading. The story is a conventional one (father and son on the road together) shifting between past and present, but with some unexpected elements. The author manages to make his characters feel real. The father/son relationship is nicely done, without getting sudsy or sentimental. And the story of the main character, Yasin's father is deeply moving. The language is beautiful. I found myself laughing aloud at times and close to tears at others. It could make a great film. Provides good insight into todays multicultural world without the soapbox factor. In fact, Majoub manages to take us through a range of fairly serious material (post colonial history, sufism, family breakup, drugs, religion, politics) without ever letting the story drag. This is one of those undiscovered jewels, which once you've read it you want to tell all your friends about. Well worth it.
0 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mahjoub has spared no detail in this novel. Although it contains a wealth of information on Europe, Travelling With Djinns fails to inspire. Whereas it starts intriguingly, its course exhaustingly meanders down a heady path of mid-aged angst and critique which is self-effacing but more often than not general. This novel pales in comparison to those of Ahdaf Soueif and Leila Aboulela.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
My Heart is Bleeding
15 Mar 2005
Format:Paperback
I randomly happened upon this book at a bookstore in Lahore, Pakistan - never having heard of Jamal Mahjoub nor read anything by him previously.
This book was truly unlike any I have ever read before. This is the first time I have ever bothered to review a book, and I had to come all the way to the Canadian Amazon site to do it (this book is not yet featured on the U.S. site.)
I think that the author managed, in Travelling with Djinns, to capture something which has never been previously captured. He struck upon so many unanticipated chords that I was left stunned. He managed to articulate feelings and reflections that I had thought were still only uniquely forming themselves in my own mind.
You know that a book has had an effect on you when, upon reaching it's end, you ask yourself "Where do I go from here?"
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