ABSTRACT
Ask any French-reading connoisseur of fine travel writing to name a contemporary master of the genre, and the odds are strong that Nicolas Bouvier will come to mind. Bouvier wrote only a handful of books, but this relatively small production has attained classic status in Europe. It took some three decades before this book could enjoy its English-language debut, yet it came in an exquisitely vivid and accurate translation by Robyn Marsack. Setting off in 1953 in a Fiat Topolino, Bouvier and Vernet travel with deliberate slowness, often settling down for a few months in a town so that Vernet can hawk his drawings and Bouvier contrive to give public lectures on Stendhal. Today, when most of the countries visited by Bouvier are at war, it is thought provoking to read his warm reports on the generous people whom he met forty years ago.
