English Pages xi, pages : map ; 21 cm [] Year This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization. From the author of the beloved novel The Towers of Trebizond, a book about Portugal that is part travelogue, part histor.
Until the s, British travellers to Arabia were for the most part wealthy dilettantes who could fund their travels fr. Table of contents : pt. In search of a journey -- pt. Don Otavio -- pt. Travels -- pt. The end of a visit. A wonderful book. A powerful response to landscape and to people. Applied to a beautiful, various, and still inscrutable country, these talents yield a singularly delightful result.
Bedford brings it all blessedly to life: I cannot recall when last I enjoyed so keenly the description of an unfamiliar place, so sharp the eye for character, so alive the ear to the run of speech. A book radiant with comedy and color. Bedford is capable of exercising a fine sort of detachment while telling an intensely personal story.
With a perceptive paragraph here, a bit of description there, a conversation recorded without comment, she extracts the very essence of rural and small-town Mexicans. In these pages they absolutely live; this is the way they are. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For when the history of modern prose in English comes to be written, Mrs Bedford will have to appear in any list of its most dazzling practitioners. It is a story of release from the claustrophobia of living in wartime New York; it tackles that most intractable of subjects, Mexico where so many literary reputations have come to grief ; and ends up with the portrait of one unforgettable Mexican, Don Otavio de X y X y X.
