Solid if unexciting fare.
A straightforward literary travel guide that takes us through Bangkok, Malacca, and other points east.
Terzani (an Italian correspondent for Der Spiegel and other European publications) opens his account with an odd anecdote: in 1976, a fortune-teller in Hong Kong warned him that under no circumstances should he fly in 1993, “not even once.” Taking the soothsayer at his word, he chose instead to take a leisurely tour of South Asia by train and car, and thereby “was obliged again to see the world as a complex network of countries divided by rivers and seas that required crossing and by frontiers that invariably spelt ‘visa’.” As it turned out, the fortune-teller was right: a German correspondent who took his place on the air circuit died in a helicopter crash. Duly chastened, the author reflected on his narrow escape (and other matters of life and death) as he traveled throughout the region, taking in the sights in Thailand, Singapore, and Ho Chi Minh City (and briefly venturing as far afield as Mongolia, Russia, and Italy). Terzani is a trustworthy enough narrator (albeit somewhat given to spiritual musings of a vaguely New Age bent), and he takes us through such little-explored landscapes as the Bolovens plateau of Cambodia (“the most heavily bombed region in the history of the world”) and Nanning (a Chinese city in which “the impatience between Chinese and foreigners is mutual, and in the Chinese it is now mixed with envy, anger, and an ever less concealed racial aspiration to settled old scores with outsiders”). This is a well-written account, but undistinguished from the usual run of travel narratives—even when Terzani salts his standard guidebook descriptions with (equally standard) PC denunciations of Western materialism.
Solid if unexciting fare.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60841-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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