The Happy Ant-heap Book

This retrospective collection from Norman Lewis is culled from over 70 years of travel. Containing new as well as previously published work, it recalls some of his most memorable journeys throughout Europe, South America, Asia and the Pacific. With such an astonishing reach, both in terms of time and distance, Lewis convincingly provides the reader not only with a magical diversity of geography, but also with a comprehensive slice of history. His vast experience inevitably means that one story sparks off another. Investigating aphrodisiacs in Liberia reminds him of Ernest Hemingway's impotence for instance, and this discursive approach, along with his unquenchable human interest in his subjects, is one of the great pleasures and strengths of the book. Whether he is charting the despoliation of a Spanish fishing village by the arrival of mass tourism, chronicling the trials of Mafioso in Sicily or claiming to be one of the few people to have been tipped by a taxi driver in Burma--"an unforgettable moment of illumination between the cultural and spiritual divide between east and west"--his responses remain fresh and undulled. And all this despite the fact Lewis, more than anyone, can legitimately claim to have "been there, seen it" a hundred times over. Although one, of course, doubts that he ever bought the T-shirt. --Nick WroeRead More