Sara Wheeler’s memoir of her life on the road begins with Dervla Murphy flashing her tits. The legendary Irish writer meets a guy in Cameroon who asks, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ “In response,” Wheeler writes, “Murphy lifts up her jumper to show her tits.” That sets the tone for a thoroughly enjoyable journey from Wheeler’s working class Bristol childhood to a year in Athens in her twenties...
The Yamadera temple complex clings to the slope of Mt. Hoju in Yamagata prefecture, not far from Yamagata City. The site’s official name is Risshakuji Temple. Yamadera (山寺) just means ‘mountain temple’ in Japanese. When my wife’s brother suggested we tag along on a work trip to this area, I jumped at the chance for a temple visit, followed by an onsen. It was only much later that I found out we’d...
Anthony Sattin in northern Iran (Photo by Sylvie Franquet) Our oldest stories deal with the relationship between settled people and nomads. From the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh to the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, it’s a story of conflict, fear and control. But for much of history, settled and nomadic peoples lived side by side. In fact, nomads were crucial catalysts and creators, and...
Mt. Iwate from Morioka (© User: yisris / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0) Trips to Japan are always a blur of friends and relatives, with lashings of beer and sake, and the best food I’ll eat all year. I wanted to cover a bit of new ground despite a packed schedule, and so I laced up my boots, bought a couple convenience store onigiri, and boarded a three-car local train to the prefectural...
Eamonn Gearon If you think the world’s largest desert is an empty wasteland, then you’re in for a surprise. You’ll be amazed at the Sahara’s geographic and cultural diversity. At the empires that rose and fell there. At its vast network of trade routes that connected the Mediterranean world to sub-Saharan Africa. And its many stories of exploration and travel. The Arabist and...
The earliest books I remember borrowing from the public library — over and over again — as a child were on astronomy and World War Two aircraft. I loved anything about the solar system, especially images from the early Viking landers that went to Mars, and the Voyager probes that ventured to the gas giants and beyond. And I probably knew more about World War Two fighters and bombers...
Jacob Mikanowski I’ve always found the history of Eastern Europe difficult to come to grips with compared to Western Europe. The history and culture of Spain, France and Italy seem to fall within clearly defined boundaries. We know what French or Italian food is, with all its regional variations, and we have a sense of French and Italian film or literature. Eastern Europe is different. Its...
My friend Lawrence Millman believes stories are essential to our survival. He’s spent his writing life tracking them down and preserving them, from East Greenland to the forgotten corners of the Canadian North. This obsession was present from his first book, Our Like Will Not Be There Again, in which he sets out to record the “wonder tales, jokes, violent opinions, and self-contained monologues”...
Barney White-Spunner (Photo by Millie Pilkington) Berlin has always been a uniquely nonconformist corner of a remarkably orderly country. It was the capital of Prussia, but its rulers preferred to live on its forested outskirts rather than in their palaces on the Spree. It came to symbolize Nazi Germany, but Hitler despised its rebellious, irreverent, freethinking residents. And for more than 40...
Joseph Roth Joseph Roth was one of the foremost European writers of the 20th century, and he wrote one of the period’s greatest novels. He wrote about the lost world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and of dispossessed people whose homeland was destroyed. His journalism captured fleeting moments with universal implications, and the social conflict, cultural upheaval, and acceleration of the inter...
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