L’Exploration du Monde

      This heavyweight and serious academic tome challenges our Eurocentric view of exploration and discovery through the ages: there is a commonly accepted and unchallenged idea that places didn’t exist until someone from our part of the world went there, and often seized ownership in the name of some monarch or other. It was almost as if nobody lived there, there was no civilisation or society to take any account of: our finding it and our judgements on what we found there were what counted. This book makes a start at demolishing such blinkered, outmoded attitudes.

It’s a fascinating anthology, in chapters of about four pages or so, each detailing a particular ‘finding’ or coming across another previously unknown place, nation, people or civilisation, by another one. Experts in the field offer quotations and transcriptions from travellers from many lands, along with enlightening commentary; I came across many travellers I had not known of.

There’s research that debunks plagiarised and borrowed narratives, such as Marco Polo’s or Ibn Battutah’s; nevertheless a picture gradually emerges of the breadth, the level of development, and the wealth of other worlds and civilisations that were not Europe. This setting straight of the historical record is important. And while Europe on the whole does not emerge very honourably from the story of its ‘discoveries’ of other nations, neither do others; power plays between leaders, rulers and the subjugated are not exclusively ours…

We also discover just how much cross-pollination there was over the centuries between different parts of the world. So, it wasn’t just Europeans travelling the globe; there were other nations – India and China, for instance – which were at one time more advanced and more powerful than any Western nation; slavery wasn’t uniquely a European invention; our diseases do seem to have wrought devastating effects on many parts of the world.

It’s a serious work, with detailed bibliographies, indices and maps; it’s a challenging read in more ways than one, and an eye-opener. And, as far as I know, not available in English.

2022: My year of reading

A house move early this year has had a major impact on my reading: books boxed up, being unable to find books that I wanted to read, far less time to read due to having so many other pressing things to deal with: are those excuses or reasons? I’m not sure. But the books are now, much later, out of boxes and on shelves, although in different places, so tracking down and finding a book still isn’t easy, until my ageing brain has internalised my new system…

There has been a certain amount or re-reading; there has been the usual ‘compulsory’ reading for our book group, some of which were real eye-openers. In 2022 I bought or was given (and kept) all of 19 books, which represents a slight decrease on 2021; I read 50 books, which marks a serious decrease on last year’s total, for the reason above-mentioned.

I have a number of resolutions for 2023: to continue buying fewer books – and this is partly because a good number of the new books I come across I only want to read once, and I know I shan’t return to them – to return to my interrupted project to re-read all of Shakespeare’s plays in chronological sequence, to revisit a lot of the poetry I cherish, to revisit some old favourites including Josef Skvorecky, Garrison Keillor and Amin Maalouf, and to continue weeding my library and disposing of books I no longer want. And, driven by the final TV series which is currently being screened, I want to re-read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy: I’ve watched the TV adaptations and loved them, and I’ve listened several times to the excellent full audiobook recording of the trilogy while I’ve been on my travels, but it’s a good few years since I actually consumed the printed volumes…

I’ve read far fewer travel books this year, and I’m wondering if I’ve finally exhausted that bug. There does seem to be a limit to the number of new travelogues through Siberia, or the various deserts of the world, that a person needs.

This year’s awards:

Best novel: Sequioa Nagamatsu How High We Go In The Dark. A novelist I’d never head of and took a punt on; a challenging fantasy which I really enjoyed and hope to go back to shortly. It’s good to read new authors.

Best non-fiction: Alberto Angela Une Journée Dans La Rome Antique. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by him.I’ve been fascinated by ancient Rome since my school days, and this historian brings it to life with a wealth of detail, without ever being patronising or talking down to his readers.

Best travel: Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire. I love deserts, and travel in deserts, and this journal of time in one of the US natioanl parks by an early ecologist (as you’d have to call him nowadays) is a gem: he shows you the desert and makes you love it as much as he does.

Best re-read: Jan Potocki Manuscript Found in Saragossa: an astonishing novel, a tour de force from the early 19^th century; it was good finally to find time to re-read this one. And I have the film, waiting to be watched, too.

Best book group discovery: Ben MacIntyre Agent Sonya. I thought, “Do I really want to bother reading this? Why would I read this?” and I did, and it was another object lesson in not dismissing books too easily. A fascinating and thought-provoking account of pro-Soviet espionage in the twenties, thirties and forties, and out book group discussion was enhanced by a guest appearance from one of the heroine’s relatives.

I’m hoping to resume normal service in 2023, ie lots more reading and re-reading, further pruning of my library, and continuing to buy rather fewer books than previously.

Martin Buckley: Grains of Sand

     I’m always up for travels in deserts, and the premise of this book was interesting: that the world’s deserts lie in two bands, roughly at the levels of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and he was going to spend a couple of years travelling through all of them…

That was the theory, but the book ended up being rather annoying because there was rarely any continuity in his travelling: he seemed to flit from place to place in a series of short chapters, creating an impression of a journey rather than a continuous account, if that makes sense. That’s probably a bit harsh; it did detract from the book on numerous occasions, but I stuck with it, and it eventually grew on me. Buckley is interesting in his factual digressions about deserts, and his approach does, somehow, give a good impression of the random chaos of trying to eke out a living in the desert, for those who have to try and get by.

His picture of Africa – the Sahara in particular – is of chaos and lawlessness, and multiple rebellions against hardly-existing governments, alongside the mere difficulties of physical survival. He was travelling at the very end of the 20^th century. But how could he miss out Timbuktoo? Dangers, I presume. This was a constant grumble for me: lots of very interesting detail about some places, many others glossed over. And yet, he does meet a number of very interesting characters on his journey, spending time with them and recounting his time with them in detail if it merits it.

As the book and his travels progress he develops a rather more political analysis, pro-minorities and ethic groups and their rights, and we are shown how complex the issues of progress and development actually are in so many places. He shows a genuine awkwardness when faced with the Australian deserts and the devastating effects of the white settlers on the Aboriginal communities.

His travels through the Xinjiang region of China show us the very beginnings of what we are now regularly reading and seeing of the Han Chinese approach to the Muslim Uighurs: even twenty years ago it’s problematic and disturbing to read about, but nowhere near as alarming as today. And there were fascinating insights into the closed world of Iranian society.

It was a decent read, after all; I’d have liked more detailed maps, but then I almost always say that; I wish there had been a greater sense of continuity to his travels, but then, at least he’s done the journey and written about it all, which is more than I will ever do.

Farley Mowat: Sibir

     Along with my interest/obsession for deserts, another one is Siberia, so I’m always glad to come across another account of travels in that vast, lonely region. Farley Mowat, a Canadian traveller, naturalist/ecologist with a particular interest in the Arctic regions of the world, was there in the mid to late 1960s, and he portrays a relatively confident, progressive and open Soviet Union, which let visitors travel pretty widely as long as they were not perceived as having a hidden agenda. Although there are still tensions between Russian past and Soviet present, and those heady forward-looking days are now almost-forgotten history, it’s still a very interesting account.

You can understand the theories behind the notion of a planned economy, and how brilliant things might now be if it had actually worked as planned. Even half a century later I’m still learning about what the West was up to behind the scenes, to ensure that the only potential rival to capitalism was eventually brought to the point of collapse in 1989, and although I recognise the horrors of what went on in the Soviet Union, I need to remind myself of similar horrors perpetrated by the so-called ‘free’ nations, which have been tidily swept under various carpets, and I can also see how the lack of a potential alternative regularly in the public eye, as communism was during the days of the Cold War, has allowed the excesses of capitalist triumphalism to wreak so much havoc in the world since then…

Mowat shows a genuine desire to understand what motivates Soviet men, women and young people, and his exploration and analysis goes beyond the superficial. He is not naive about the darker sides of Soviet society and its history and is often careful to protect his sources. He describes immense progress and quite astonishing achievements since the Revolution in the remotest and most inaccessible regions of the country, and explains how even half a century ago Soviet scientists were aware of the ecological risks involved in the development of the tundra and permafrost zones. His particular interest in and knowledge of Arctic regions leads to an emphasis on what he calls the ‘small peoples’, ie the local ethnic minorities of which there are many, and to reasoned comparisons between what happens in the Soviet Union and his home territory, Canada.

He’s not afraid to be critical, to point out gaps in Soviet thinking and planning, to note inconsistencies in what he’s told, or to log the unanswered questions: he is an acute and enquiring observer. And he shows a genuine affection for many of those whom he met on his travels; they are equally open and friendly.

I feel very conflicted reading such accounts nowadays; so much time has now passed that collectively we are losing sight and memory of the good things the USSR managed to achieve, whilst constantly being reminded of the horrors; it’s not a balanced picture, and there are obvious reasons for that. The more I read accounts of travels like Mowat’s – and I’ve read quite a lot – the more I realise the inability of the West to understand what moves and motivates and matters to other countries that are so different. Then I reflect that the converse may also be true, and think that we may be doomed as a species and a planet because of this inability to be sufficiently open and understanding of what is different…

Pat Barr: A Curious Life for a Lady

     I’ve been fascinated by the Victorian traveller Isabella Bird ever since I came across and really enjoyed the Librivox recordings of A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains and The Englishwoman in America, both excellent and enjoyable listens. So when I came across this in a second-hand bookshop – not having even known of its existence – I had high hopes of learning more about the intrepid woman. And there are clues to aspects of her life that aren’t written about in her books.

However, the book as a whole was rather disappointing: most of it consists of a rather lifeless summary of all Bird’s actual travel books, with lengthy quotations, but almost completely devoid of the spirit of the woman who actually wrote them. So the book saved me having to read some books which I was warned were rather lengthy and worthy, but it did seem rather a futile endeavour.

Bird travelled mainly for her physical and mental health: while she vegetated in Scotland, various ailments and unhappinesses took over her life; when she travelled she became a different person. Her grim home life and health really did contrast greatly with her happiness and vigour as she travelled, and the curiosity and happiness that comes across in her books. Many of these were derived from detailed letters she wrote to the sister she loved and left at home in Scotland while she was abroad.

Gradually a picture does emerge of Bird, and there were a few more details about the one aspect of her life that had intrigued me, her relationship with the outlaw figure Rocky Mountain Jim, with whom she explored Colorado and about whom she writes in considerable detail; in another world one can almost imagine them as lovers…

Bird wrote well; she stepped out of the narrow gender confines of her age, took astonishing risks for a single woman traveller at any time, survived some hair-raising scrapes, and so necessarily gives a refreshing and open perspective on what she saw as she travelled the world.

I can recommend Isabella Bird as a traveller and writer, but not this account of her life and travels.

Sara Wheeler: Travels in a Thin Country

     On a map, Chile does look weird, so long and narrow a country, stretching through desert almost to the Antarctic. And, for those of us of a certain generation, there are the memories of Augusto Pinochet, one of the vilest men on the planet in his day, murdering and torturing in the name of the free market and anti-communism. So I was drawn to what purported to be travels through that country, perhaps in the same way that the writer was. She certainly seems to have had a good time; me not so much. And let’s get my usual gripe out of the way at the start: poor maps. And sizeable sections of the country do not seem to feature in her travelogue at all…

Wheeler exemplifies the issues I have with recent and contemporary travellers: how is it different from tourism – not a lot – and what sort of a picture can they convey of a country? This book is so self-focused it’s hard to put together a real, continuous picture of Chile, although glimpses do emerge from time to time. She is political, and there are regular reminders of the awfulness of the Pinochet era and its effects on the nation and its people, as well as the engineering of that dictatorship by the USA; such things must not be forgotten. I still cannot bring myself to re-read Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits…

Wheeler’s account of the Atacama desert, which I was really looking forward to, disappoints. It’s the driest place on the planet and a world centre for astronomy because of its clear skies; it’s a good job I knew that before I read this book. In the end there is a lack of coherent context and background to this picture of Chile; a mishmash of brief nuggets and throwaway references does not suffice, in my opinion. The writer came across as very lucky or privileged to be able to travel freely and widely, with nary a problem or a difficulty, and friends aplenty to jet in and join her whenever she was bored or needed company. I tired of the drinking exploits, too.

So, I felt very deceived by the time I got to the end of this; I was tempted to give up several times. Here was a wealthy and privileged Western tourist gadding about and having a good time, getting a few exotic places ticked off the list. I learned very little about Chile, really; I did have my prejudices about modern travel writing confirmed…

Lea Ypi: Free

     I have a rather strange relationship with Albania, and I have never been there. Some forty or more years ago, during the days of would-be socialist nations, I discovered the nightly English propaganda broadcasts on Radio Tirana, which were preceded by the strident call-sign With Pickaxe and Rifle, and always ended with the words, “Goodbye, dear listeners!” followed by a rousing version of the Internationale. The broadcasts were so over-the-top that they caused much amusement. And there was the Albanian Shop, purveyors of propaganda and the party daily from a basement shop in a Covent Garden back street. Then I discovered the astonishing novels of the only Albanian novelist I’m aware of, Ismail Kadare. You will find reviews of some in these pages, if you care to look.

I think I’ve also read some travel writing about the country. So this book, about growing up and coming of age in Albania at the time of the transition from the age of socialism to the age of capitalism, caught my attention, and it’s both an interesting and a disturbing read. It seems to have received many positive reviews, not all from readers who seem to have understood the complexity or the subtlety of what appears to be Lea Ypi’s message.

The first part, which is at times annoying to read as it’s from a child’s perspective and written in the present, describes the last days of the old regime and the demonstrations and transition to something new and different; the second part is after the change and the attempts, in many different ways, to come to terms with it. It is strange to read of a young person and her family discovering ‘our’ world, the ‘real’ world, learning its ways for the first time and interacting with it, as well as gradually discovering truths which had been concealed in her past, in many ways and for all sorts of reasons… the importance of ‘biography’ which only becomes clear as the author learns about her family’s real past and bourgeois origins.

The weirdness of the country’s isolation is striking, as is the innocence of an 11 year-old and her perspective and the lack of it, from inside the regime. There is a sense of utter confusion as changes begin, there are no anchors, there is no reliability in anything: the craziness is portrayed from within, with a naive yet questioning tone behind it all; there are serious potential consequences if a child is overheard saying the wrong thing. We can see how people within the system came to think, to rationalise and to explain things to themselves, and the compromises they had to make to remain safe. It’s a bizarre, looking-glass world that makes perfect sense when seen only from within, exactly like our own, if you just stop to think about it.

The author’s tragedy is that she, as an 11 year-old, believes in that now crumbling world, in which it seems that the adults were only going through the motions. The consequences of ‘freedom’, ‘shock therapy’ are truly awful; huge numbers try to emigrate. They were heroes when they were fleeing ‘communism’, but fleeing capitalism they are an unwanted nuisance. You see how millions of innocent and naive people were fleeced by capitalist plunderers, taken in and fleeced by spivs because they were naive and gullible; all sorts of Western plagues and diseases – like AIDS – arrive: we see the meaning of ‘freedom’, and its price.

The author is older now, and she reflects on the new, and different, dilemmas those close to her are faced by. Her family are among the hundreds of thousands ruined by various pyramid selling schemes: how were they to know? And then there is a civil war, frightening from a young person’s point of view but which I remember hearing almost nothing about.

It’s a thought-provoking book, a challenging book, which faces us with the two sorts of freedom we are never really aware of here in the rich West, freedom from and freedom to: each has its (very different) price.

Lorca: Aube d’été

     I’d never read, or felt particularly moved to read, anything by Lorca until I came across a reference to travel writing; the French publisher Folio has a series of mini-books at 2 euros each, so I decided I’d have a go. Apparently these are some of his very earliest writings, and at times that’s very evident, reminding me frequently of GCSE descriptive writing exercises. If that feels a little harsh, I’ll add that I would have been assessing them at A+ or A*…

Mainly he focuses on southern Spain, and his descriptions, often quite short, are languorous, evocative, effortless as he paints vivid pictures of the humidity and torpor of very hot places. They are like unfinished sketches. He is clearly fascinated by, or attracted to both religious buildings and settings, and places in ruins or decaying.

I did feel a lot like a teacher assessing as I read these pieces; there was lots of promise, flashes of brilliance; at times I felt he was trying too hard, but here was certainly a talent I’d want to encourage. And there were several much more developed and coherent, lengthier pieces that really worked for me.

I also discovered the limitations of translation apps as I read this book; they’re all right for run-of-the-mill, everyday language, but when a writer gets into names of plants, flowers, trees, or more poetic and slightly archaic descriptive language, then they’re pretty useless: both WordReference and Linguee failed completely with this text…

It was worth a 2-euro punt and I’ll be on the lookout for some of his later travel writing.

Edward Abbey: Desert Solitaire

     I really enjoyed revisiting this minor classic of travel literature and 1960s hippy days. Abbey is both curmudgeonly (in a nice sort of way) and iconoclastic, too. Here he writes of his time as a national park ranger in the wilds of Utah, occasional encounters with often gormless and exasperating tourists, and the adventures and exploration he was able to undertake alone and with friends whilst in those remote regions. It reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s Desolation Angels (I think) about his time as a fire-watcher in one of America’s great forests…

Abbey describes really well, conveying atmosphere very effectively, observing all things very closely, and interpreting where he needs to, from a deep knowledge of flora, fauna, geology and geography as well as of the various indigenous American tribes of the region. He revels in isolation, hence his deliberately sought volunteer post out in the back of beyond; he enjoys stillness and silence, his own company and being able to be with his thoughts, all attributes which call to me as well. And he is not afraid of the dangers – animal or natural – which abound in the region. There is a recklessness about him and his activities; he is unfazed by a number of scrapes he gets himself into.

Here is a man who feels at home in the desert and who can share with his readers his heightened awareness and appreciation of the most mundane of things and events. It is very much a masculine world he inhabits, and I suppose what we might today term alpha male activities he indulges in, but it is a text of its time and reflects the attitudes and values of those transitional times. I also found myself considering on what to me came across as specifically American in his experience, that love of wilderness and vast wide open spaces which it’s very difficult to experience here in Europe.

He’s also opinionated, but I enjoyed this, as I suspect most of us do when the opinions coincide or overlap with our own. There are frequent polemics against what he calls industrial tourism, and against the car above all, as a way for people get out into a wilderness but then fail to interact with that environment. Sometimes there are stories unconnected with his park duties or park life that ramble on rather too long, but they were bearable in the end.

An anarchist, hippy, eco-warrior (not that he’d have recognised the term) then; what shines through this book is the beauty of the natural world and his sense of ecstasy in being part of it, and his fearlessness despite the dangers. It’s a really good and uplifting read.

Jan Potocki: Voyages

     I bought this because I was planning to re-read his amazing novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, and then watch the film; I hadn’t known much about his life or that he was widely travelled, in the years at the end of the eighteenth century when his native Poland was gradually being dismembered and removed from the map of Europe.

Potocki is a careful observer with a good eye for detail and a focus on the exotic (or what would have seemed exotic to a European traveller at the time). The book is extremely well presented with a very detailed commentary and copious annotation, rather like the current Hakluyt Society volumes in the UK. The one thing seriously lacking is maps of any sort, to allow the curious reader to track the traveller’s progress.

It’s a strange mish-mash of places: travel through Holland during a revolution, extensive travels through the then Kingdom of Morocco, travels in Astrakhan, and detailed analysis of why a Russian diplomatic mission to the court of the emperor of China was an utter fiasco. Morocco is closely described, and Potocki seems to avoid Western prejudices against Arabs and Islam. The minutiae of events at a chaotic time in Morocco now seems rather dull and dreary stuff, though.

Descriptions of peoples, places and customs in Astrakhan are rather more interesting; perhaps Potocki was one of the first Westerners to travel there and write a detailed account? He comes over as erudite and a seeker out of knowledge, balanced in his approach, eschewing the racism and bigotry often found in accounts of that time. He’s not only interested in the peoples – and lists and differentiates many of them – but also their languages, and the differences between them: a researcher in the sense we would understand the word.

The piece on the mission to China is fascinating. Potocki is far more aware of the demands of diplomacy, of understanding others and how their approach might differ from his own, of the necessary sensitivities and protocols required in such situations, than are the Russian diplomats he accompanies. They plod woodenly on, it seems, trampling on every sensitivity until the Chinese basically tell them to clear off, that the mission will not be received…

Having said all that, reading the book was something of a chore and I am not going to recommend it to you unless you have similar and quite particular interest as I do. Not a piece of light travel reading for a casual reader.