Diana Athill
From Vermont to Nepal
Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya
By Jamaica Kincaid
National Geographic Books 192pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
A seed-gathering trek in the Himalaya, such as that made by Jamaica Kincaid and three botanist friends in Nepal, is no picnic. It involves walking either up or down all day long over steep and often treacherous terrain (level patches large enough to camp on are hard to find), often in great heat and sometimes in snow, while violent storms and hungry leeches abound, and encounters with Maoist guerrillas are frightening. This particular trek, however, lasted for only three weeks, was professionally guided, portered and cooked for, and covered the kind of ground which by now is familiar to a good many enterprising travellers. It provided an experience both testing and thrilling, but not an easy one out of which to fashion a whole book.
Kincaid does not try to endow it with more glamour or danger than it deserves. What she sets out to do is to share with the reader the reactions of a sensitive person accustomed to a comfortable life in Vermont when she finds herself toughing it in these spectacular mountains,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'It’s long been known that there is an optimum reproductive window and that women enjoy a considerably shorter one than men. For both sexes this window is opening and closing earlier than it used to.' (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-end-of-babies
Sixty years ago today, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter outer space. @Andrew_Crumey looks at his role in the space race.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/one-giant-leap-for-mankind
On the night of 5th July 1809, a group of soldiers kidnapped Pope Pius VII on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. Munro Price looks at what happened next.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bonaparte-meets-his-match