Christopher Ondaatje
In Search of Nomads: An English Obsession from Hester Stanhope to Bruce Chatwin
In Search of Nomads: An English Obsession From Hester Stanhope to Bruce Chatwin
By John Ure
Constable 232pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
THIS ENTERTAINING BOOK chronicles the extraordinary Britons and Americans who have chosen to seek out and travel with nomads, focusing on the experiences of visitors to tribes in four territories: the Arabian peninsula, with its Bedouin; the Sahara, with its Moors and Tuareg; the mountain ranges of Southern Iran, with their migratory pastoral tribes; and the steppes of Central Asia, with their Mongol horsemen and Tartar descendants. John Ure, a former British ambassador to Brazil and Cuba who gives ‘travelling uncomfortably in remote places and writing about it comfortably afterwards’ as his recreation in Who’s Who, has made journeys with tribes in each of the four areas, and is thus well qualified to write this primer to wanderlust-struck Westerners.
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
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore
'As we read, we know that in a short time the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and colour television will sweep that age over the balustrade and into the sea, but for now everyone is happy.'
Simon Baker is charmed by Graham Swift's new novel, 'Here We Are'.
http://ow.ly/uDL050ylh80