{"product_id":"the-way-of-the-world-isbn-9781590173220","title":"The Way of the World","description":"In 1953, twenty-four-year old Nicolas Bouvier and his artist friend Thierry Vernet set out to make their way overland from their native Geneva to the Khyber Pass. They had a rattletrap Fiat and a little money, but above all they were equipped with the certainty that by hook or by crook they would reach their destination, and that there would be unanticipated adventures, curious companionship, and sudden illumination along the way. \u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e, which Bouvier fashioned over the course of many years from his journals, is an entrancing story of adventure, an extraordinary work of art, and a voyage of self-discovery on the order of Robert M. Pirsig’s \u003ci\u003eZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.\u003c\/i\u003e As Bouvier writes, “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making—or unmaking—you.”\u003cp\u003e\"A genuine masterpiece, an exhilarating, innocent, perceptive and wholly enjoyable  young man's travel book, and a discovery of the Asian road that by rights deserves  to occupy the same shelf as great classics of the genre such as Robert Byron's \u003ci\u003eThe  Road to Oxian\u003c\/i\u003ea or Eric Newby's \u003ci\u003eShort Walk in the Hindu Kush\u003c\/i\u003e.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe exhilaration of the open road and the feeling of connectedness to the natural world that it can produce, is, after all, a common human experience. Simply expressed, it has produced some of mankind’s greatest writing. The Swiss travel writer Nicolas Bouvier explores this territory in his youthful masterpiece, \u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World,\u003c\/i\u003e where he conveys as well as anyone the raw intoxication of being on the road.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterpiece which elevates the mundane to the memorable  and captures the thrill of two passionate and curious young men discovering both  the world and themselves. Racy and meditative, romantic and realistic, the book is  as brilliant as Patrick Leigh Fermor's \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e, but with its erudition more  lightly worn and as alive as Kerouac's \u003ci\u003eOn the Road, \u003c\/i\u003ethough without a whisper of self-aggrandisement...On  every page a gem or two glitters, and the accumulation of colour, detail and inspired  metaphor produce an intensely hypnotic effect...If you read any travel book this  year--or indeed the next forty years--this should be it.\"  --Rory Maclean, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e (UK)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Bouvier has all the gifts a travel writer could want--curiosity, tolerance, hardiness--but  above all he has a poet's sensibility with words. His is a lyrical style that is  as pure as spring air.\" --James Owen, \u003ci\u003eTelegra\u003c\/i\u003eph (UK) \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"...it's about a journey in the 1950s from Belgrade to India. They try to go to India in a tiny battered Fiat and it takes them several years, these friends, and it probably describes the attraction of travel better than any book I've ever read.\" --Roy Moxam\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Bouvier wrote only a handful  of books, but this relatively small production has attained classic status in Europe...His  prose is at once musical and remarkably factual, while the odd detail always seems  captured with the deftness of a haiku poet. His gift for summing up significant experiences  often rivals Thoreau's.\" --\u003ci\u003ePaths to Contemporary French Literature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A classic on  the Continent; [Bouvier's] youthful masterpiece...has something close to biblical  status for the current generation of French travel writers....Like Lévi-Strauss,  like Chatwin, like Sebald even, his writing binds elements of autobiography and travelogue,  history and literature. Yet Nicolas Bouvier remains his own man; he is the minimalist  of modern travel writing.\" --Ben Hutchinson\u003ci\u003e, Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e (UK)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"An exquisitely vivid  and accurate translation.\" --\u003ci\u003ePaths to Contemporary French Literature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"It is difficult  to isolate the best moments of [\u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e]. Bouvier is a colourist and  a miniaturist of the highest order.\" --\u003ci\u003eLe Monde\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Bouvier alerts the reader to the  transcendant dimensions of travel.\" --Jasion Elliot\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"...like a meteor which comes  to light up our atmosphere.\" --André Rollin\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In the tradition of great travel writing  it is beautifully written and works on many levels - being an account of the journey,  a meditation on life and an appreciation of the spirit of a place.\" --Sarah Anderson,  founder of the Travel Bookshop, in \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eNicolas Bouvier\u003c\/b\u003e (1929-1998) was born near Geneva. His  father was a librarian, who encouraged his son both to read—among the  books Bouvier devoured as a child were those of Stevenson, Jules Verne,  Jack London, and Fenimore Cooper—and to travel. Bouvier studied for some  years at the University of Geneva, but in 1953 he left without a degree  to join his friend Thierry Vernet in the voyage to the Khyber Pass that  is described in \u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e, published eight years later. Subsequent journeys took Bouvier to Sri Lanka (his experiences there inspired his one novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Scorpion Fish\u003c\/i\u003e),  Japan, and the Aran Islands (described in the books Japanese Chronicles  and Journey to the Aran Islands and Other Places). Bouvier worked for  many years as a photographer and as a picture researcher, spending much  of his time hunting down obscure images in various libraries and  archives. He was also a founding member, along with Max Frisch and  Friedrich Dürrenmatt and others, of Gruppe Olten, an informal  organization of Swiss writers on the political left, and the author a  slim book of poems, \u003ci\u003eLe Dehors et le dedans\u003c\/i\u003e (1982). \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePatrick Leigh Fermor\u003c\/b\u003e (1915-2011) was an intrepid  traveler, a heroic soldier, and a writer with a unique prose style.  After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to  Constantinople that begins in \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e (1977) and continues through \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e (1986), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. His books \u003ci\u003eMani\u003c\/i\u003e (1958) and \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. In  the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer  in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and  OBE. He lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife,  Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani—and partly in Worcestershire. He was  knighted in 2004 for his services to literature and to British–Greek  relations.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThierry Vernet\u003c\/b\u003e (1927-1993) was born in Grand-Saconnex in  the canton of Geneva. He studied painting and stage design with Jean  Plojoux and Xavier Fiala, and worked as a stage designer for productions  throughout Europe. He was married to the painter Floristella Stephanie. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobyn Marsack\u003c\/b\u003e has been director of the Scottish Poetry  Library since 2000. She has degrees in English literature from Victoria  University (New Zealand) and Oxford, and has worked as an editor for the  \u003ci\u003eCarcanet Press\u003c\/i\u003e. She won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for her translation of Nicolas Bouvier’s \u003ci\u003eLe Poisson-scorpion\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Scorpion Fish\u003c\/i\u003e).","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233764684005,"sku":"NP9781590173220","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590173220.jpg?v=1767742156","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-way-of-the-world-isbn-9781590173220","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}