Graeme Wood, Staff Editor
The Way of the World, by Nicolas Bouvier
I hope a special, extra-rosy section of the Gardens of Paradise are
reserved for the editors of New York Review of Books Classics series,
who keep in print three of my favorite travel books: Tete-Michel
Kpomassie's An African in Greenland, Patrick Leigh Fermor's A
Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, and
Nicolas Bouvier's The Way of the World. In the last year I have
read only the last of these, so my choice for best book I read this year is an easy one.
The Way of the World chronicles a road-trip from the Balkans to Afghanistan. Parts of the route, to be undertaken safely today, might require Bouvier to mount a machine-gun on the top of his rickety Fiat—which is to say that nowadays it would probably be wisest to avoid the trip altogether. Back then, of course, such precautions were unnecessary, although the Khyber Pass has never been a wholly safe place. The lack of apprehension pervading this trip, and the unadulterated joy at sallying forth unencumbered by obligation, money, or fear, make Bouvier's narrative a precious and wonderful one to read. To hear him tell of being detained among Kurds (as woebegone then as today), or of meeting colorful English expatriates resident in Quetta (whose most famous expatriate today is probably Mullah Muhammad Omar) is to remember that the contemporary debates about troop levels and tactics are as jejune as they are necessary, and that the the most interesting aspects of dangerous places are rarely their dangers. For anyone with his eyes on these parts of the world, or his feet on them, that's a useful reminder.
The Way of the World chronicles a road-trip from the Balkans to Afghanistan. Parts of the route, to be undertaken safely today, might require Bouvier to mount a machine-gun on the top of his rickety Fiat—which is to say that nowadays it would probably be wisest to avoid the trip altogether. Back then, of course, such precautions were unnecessary, although the Khyber Pass has never been a wholly safe place. The lack of apprehension pervading this trip, and the unadulterated joy at sallying forth unencumbered by obligation, money, or fear, make Bouvier's narrative a precious and wonderful one to read. To hear him tell of being detained among Kurds (as woebegone then as today), or of meeting colorful English expatriates resident in Quetta (whose most famous expatriate today is probably Mullah Muhammad Omar) is to remember that the contemporary debates about troop levels and tactics are as jejune as they are necessary, and that the the most interesting aspects of dangerous places are rarely their dangers. For anyone with his eyes on these parts of the world, or his feet on them, that's a useful reminder.