Contact!

A Book of Encounters

14 May 2010

Territory Rights — Worldwide excluding Canada and the British Commonwealth.

Jan Morris (Author)

Description

A delightful and hilarious companion for anyone taking a trip and an indispensable work for any fan of Jan Morris.

With her travel chronicles unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, Jan Morris’s legendary books on Venice, Manhattan, and Trieste have made her one of our most beloved writers. Now reflecting back on over half a century, Morris has decided to write not about the destinations but about the people she has encountered. Whether writing as James or later as Jan, Morris introduces us to a panoply of memorable characters—the Sherpa guide who first scaled Mt. Everest, the lascivious Manhattan cabbie, and the proverbial spy in the raincoat. She provides insightful portraits of the famous, such as Harry Truman and Jordan’s King Hussein, and glimpses of the infamous, including Adolf Eichmann. Recalling human encounters on six continents, she paints a vibrant, funny, and moving picture of humanity. Ultimately, no figure comes into clearer focus than Morris herself, an astonishing chronicler of the human spectacle. Contact! is one book you’ll want to carry with you wherever you go.

Reviews

"This wonderful distillation of Jan Morris's chance encounters shows our greatest living travel writer at her best—wise, well-read, wide-traveled, clear-sighted, compassionate, humane, unforgettable." — Paul Theroux

"The most delightful, intelligent, perception collection of human observations I've ever read: I don't know of anything like it." — Alberto Manguel, author of A Reader on Reading

Hardback

9780393076400

152 x 218 mm • 202 pages

£18.99

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Standalone Ebook

9780393079135

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