Travels with a Typewriter: A Reporter at Large
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
Collected here for the first time, a hugely entertaining selection of Michael Frayn's classic travel writing from the sixties and seventies, including pieces on Germany, Cuba, Israel, Japan and Russia.
Product Description
'All writers of fiction should be required by law to go out and do a bit of reporting from time to time, just to remind them how different the real world in front of their eyes is from the invented world behind them.'
This is what Frayn did in mid-career, when he took up his old trade, journalism, and wrote a series of occasional articles for the Observer about some of the places in the world that interested him. He wanted to describe 'not the extraordinary but the ordinary, the typical, the everyday' and his accounts became the starting-point for some of the novels and plays he wrote later. From a kibbutz in Israel to summer rains in Japan, bicycles in Cambridge to Notting Hill at the end of the 1950s, they are glimpses of a world which sometimes seems tantalisingly familar, sometimes vanished forever.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I heard the author interviewed on the radio and was keen to buy the book based on the radio show. I was rather disappointed, the articles are hopelessly out of date and I feel it was a bit of a missed opportunity.
Many of the articles were written a long time ago and while there is certainly an interest in reading about the perspectives of for example, Notting Hill when it was just starting to become gentifried and what St Tropez was like in the 1960's. A little introduction by the author before each article and perhaps a retrospective of what had changed since the article was written would have helped but the simple matter is that they are not that entertaining in the first place and rather dry.
The whole book has the feeling that it was an idea of the publishers to dredge up old articles and put them together in a book like the literary equivalent of a compilation album of a well-known groups less well known (for good reason) songs.
However I still admire Michael Frayn and wish him well but I feel he shouldn't have been talked into this.
Many of the articles were written a long time ago and while there is certainly an interest in reading about the perspectives of for example, Notting Hill when it was just starting to become gentifried and what St Tropez was like in the 1960's. A little introduction by the author before each article and perhaps a retrospective of what had changed since the article was written would have helped but the simple matter is that they are not that entertaining in the first place and rather dry.
The whole book has the feeling that it was an idea of the publishers to dredge up old articles and put them together in a book like the literary equivalent of a compilation album of a well-known groups less well known (for good reason) songs.
However I still admire Michael Frayn and wish him well but I feel he shouldn't have been talked into this.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was a preasent for a retired journalist friend who was over the moon with it , and made a comment after about it being a throughly good read
Format:Paperback
I got this out of the library, the cover enticed me. I found it to be quite good though dry in parts. Having said that it was hysterically funny in others and so I'd give it a seven out of ten. Jan Bird
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
