The Way of the World - Hardcover

"Belgrade. "Midnight was chiming when I stopped the car in front of the Cafe Majestic. A friendly silence reigned over the still warm street. Through the lacy curtains I saw Thierry sitting inside. He had drawn a life-size pumpkin on the tablecloth and was killing time filling in the pips ... I gazed through the window for a long time before joining him at the table. We clinked glasses. I was happy to see this old project taking shape, and he to have a companion". In June 1953, Nicolas Bouvier and an artist friend set off in an old Fiat Topolino and very gradually worked their away across Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan. Bouvier made notes; in Baluchistan they disappeared; it didn't matter; he remembered everything. Ten years later he published L 'Usage du Monde, which quickly became a cult travel bible in France, and was subsequently translated into a number of European languages. It is now available in English for the first time. The Way of the World is an elegant and quietly knowing account of eighteen months spent in towns and countrysides where foreign visitors were not so often seen as they are today. Bouvier's abilities at description rank with the best; he favors the small incident, the fleeting encounter, the telling gesture above the dramatic and exotic. The Way of the World is a fine and nuanced account of one culture confronting another, and like the best travel writing, reflects convincingly on the meaning of the experience.

Nicolas Bouvier (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 The Way of the World, published eight years later. Subsequent journeys took Bouvier to Sri Lanka (his experiences there inspired his one novel, The Scorpion Fish), 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, Le Dehors et le dedans (1982).

Patrick Leigh Fermor (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 A Time of Gifts (1977) and continues through Between the Woods and the Water (1986), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (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.

Thierry Vernet (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.

Robyn Marsack 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 Carcanet Press. She won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for her translation of Nicolas Bouvier’s Le Poisson-scorpion (The Scorpion Fish).