SOMETHING WHOLESALE
A TRAVELLER’S LIFE
LOVE AND WAR IN THE APENNINES
all by Eric Newby (Fourth Estate UK)
I was so thrilled to find that Harper Collins have reprinted these wonderful Eric Newby titles originally published in the 1950's and 1960's.
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush was I think the first travel book I ever read (way back in 1961 when it first came out in paperback) and memories of it have stayed with me since. I am now looking forward to a re-read, refreshing my memory of that legendary journey from Mayfair to Afghanistan, and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, north-east of Kabul.
It was a cable, John Buchan style — CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE? — to a friend in Rio de Janeiro in the spring of 1956 that launched Eric Newby on his career as a travel writer. The friend, Hugh Carless, (his response was three words long - OF COURSE, HUGH), was to become immortalised as Newby’s long- suffering companion on a journey of a delightfully amateurish sort, which became the subject of one of the funniest travel books ever written, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush published 1958.
Fifty-odd years on, the book remains one of the most popular travel books ever published, reprinted many times and now, available again in a beautifully repackaged edition, with new cover and a new introduction, along with a series of other wonderful Eric Newby titles listed above.
And the good news is that in March Harper Colloins will release five further Eric Newby titles:
MERRY DANCE AROUND THE WORLD
ON THE SHORES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
ROUND IRELAND IN LOW GEAR
SLOWLY DOWN THE GANGES
SMALL PLACE IN ITALY
Can't wait.
Eric Newby died in 2006.
2 comments:
Good news! Short Walk was the very first travel book I ever read, too!
Hello, was trying to find a way to email these links to you and could find no other way than through this comments section. The Indian literary scene has been in an uproar this year over a magazine piece on William Dalrymple at the Jaipur Litfest... William wrote off a letter in response, which was carried. The writer then wrote a rejoinder... Attaching all links below, starting with the original piece.
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/the-literary-raj
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/the-piece-you-ran-is-blatantly-racist
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/does-dalrymple-know-what-racism-really-is
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