Category Archives: Books review

“My War Gone By, I Miss It So”, by Anthony Loyd, Anchor.

Posted on August 18, 2018 by

My edition has been printed in 2000 and, as all cheap paperbacks, isn’t ageing very well. The pages are yellowing with the characteristic celerity of poor quality pulp; its spine is bent, but in fairness it was already in this … Continue reading →

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“Wild Coast. Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge”, by John Gimlette, Profile Books

Posted on March 1, 2018 by

Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana: raise your hands if you can recite, by heart – and no Googling, I can see you – their capitals. Not a clue? Well, I honestly doubt there’ll be many, amongst the few who’ll stumble across … Continue reading →

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“Out of Steppe” by Daniel Metcalfe, Arrow – Random House

Posted on January 6, 2018 by

If the passion for travelling off the beaten path, exploring places that don’t make it on the top-shelf brochure at your local Trailfinders (but, let’s face it, they don’t even make it to the bottom one), was a genetic strand … Continue reading →

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“A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions”, by Peter Robb, Bloomsbury.

Posted on August 19, 2017 by

Courtesy Bloomsbury publishing If I were to trawl through my notebooks, through the shapeless lumps of bytes that make the impalpable documents folder in my laptop’s solid-state drive, I’d find a page, or many a .docx files, titled exactly like … Continue reading →

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“Arabian Sands”, by Wilfred Thesiger, Penguin Books.

Posted on August 19, 2016 by

Italo Calvino once wrote that a ‘classic’ is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. If this is the approved meter of judgement for the category, then I’ve no doubts that Arabian Sands belongs to … Continue reading →

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Book review: “The places in between” by Rory Stewart, Mariner Books.

Posted on February 13, 2016 by

Every now and then I happen to lay my hands on a creased, coffee-stained copy of glossy travel magazines. Be it Condé Nast, be it Monocle, it’s bound to eventually pontificate over which country, or city, is the next big … Continue reading →

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“Blood river. A journey to Africa’s broken heart” by Tim Butcher, Vintage.

Posted on September 5, 2015 by

I was travelling through a country with more past than future, a place where the hands of the clock spin not forwards, but backwards. It doesn’t happen very often to me to mumble “No shit” at an audible level on … Continue reading →

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“Dark Star Safari” by Paul Theroux, Penguin Books

Posted on May 2, 2015 by

Source http://www.paultheroux.com Paul Theroux and I go a long way. I originally picked up his book almost one year ago, in its podcast form, and then – almost immediately – dropped it. The reason? The voice of the reader: whereas … Continue reading →

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“In Search of Kazakhstan”, by Christopher Robbins, Profile Books

Posted on March 17, 2015 by

I might not be a shopper faithful to the brands, but when it comes to books I’m quite a man of habit in the sense that I have a tendency to stick with an author that I know and respect and … Continue reading →

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“To a Mountain in Tibet’, by Colin Thubron, Vintage

Posted on January 10, 2015 by

Courtesy Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9571766-to-a-mountain-in-tibet There’s an expression that Stephen King seemingly likes to use when describing the rapture of writing or reading, the feeling of concentrating on the task at hand so much that we end up being oblivious to the passing … Continue reading →

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