South-East Asia: Southeast Asia (Traveller's Literary Companion)

Rating:
Summary: Literary tourism - viewing countries through their authors
Review: Unlike the standard travel guide chock full of the helpful practical information on hotels and sights, this book provides the traveller something very different, and also very satisfying.

A compendium of short stories and poems by authors of ten Southeast Asian countries (most of them translated into English from the original Asian language), this book also has also very userful biographical notes on the authors, additional bibliography for each country, and useful historical and social information.

For the traveller who is interested in the literary life of these countries, this book is a marvelous collection from novelists, poets, and travel writers who have seen these countries through different eyes than those of most hurried tourists. One short poem from Indonesia brought back my own memories of hitchiking days as a teenager spent in a fishing village on the island of Samosir in Lake Toba in Sumatra. The author, Sitor Situmorang, speaks of a young man who returns to his native village after many years in Europe: "The lost child is now back...not a single person he knows anymore..how many harvests have there been...whatever has happened?"

This series has other similar books on Japan, Africa, Latin America, and other regions. I look forward to seeing this genre flourish as travellers' interests in different lands continue to multiply and go beyond just the cursory view of the sights.