The World, the World

‘I’m looking for the people who have always been there, and belong to the places where they live’ In this rich and fascinating second volume of memoirs, following the classic I Came, I Saw, Norman Lewis takes us from Enfield to Guatemala via Brazil and to Peru by way of Braintree, heartland of the paranormal, not to mention Vietnam, Burma, Spain, Cuba, Sicily and India. He recounts his wartime career, his life abroad and at home and his reminiscences of Ian Fleming and Ernest Hemingway with his characteristic humour, sharp eye for detail and keen delight in the absurd. ‘He is a specialist in communicating his own peculiar sense of the futilities of travel, even when he was investigating in the utmost discomfort and difficulty a business as terrible as the genocide of the Brazilian Indians. He never wastes time on being indignant. But he is frequently surprising’ John Bayley, London Review of Books ‘He is a rare witness to our century and to the larcenies we have committed in remote places, hoping not to be seen. He has made, in his quiet way, an enduring impact on this planet. But he can be read for giggles, too’ Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph ‘Vintage Norman Lewis; the light lash of his humour, his sniffer-dog’s nose for the quirky, the lyrical brilliance of his prose’ Guardian ‘One of the greatest – and most egotistical – travel writers of our age’ Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph