I finished these two excellent books, both with "Lost" in the title, a while back, but at least wanted to acknowledge their distinction with a quick note. The ideas for both books are marvelous and original -- not an easy accomplishment in an age of exponentially proliferating travel books!
Daniel Kalder's brashly funny Lost Cosmonaut explores some (there are lots) of the obscure republics of Soviet Europe: Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El, and Udmurtia. The surface of Kalder's narrative is "disrespectful" and politically incorrect, which some readers dislike, but I felt that one level deeper he actually conveys an existential empathy with his destinations that is, as he aptly puts it, "anti-touristic":
The anti-tourist does not visit places that are in any way desirable...The anti-tourist seeks locked doors and demolished buildings...The anti-tourist travels at the wrong time of year...The anti-tourist is interested only in hidden histories, in delightful obscurities, in bad art...The anti-tourist values disorientation over enlightenment.
And of disorientation, Kalder provides a-plenty.
Riccardo Orizio's Lost White Tribes is also thoroughly disorienting, taking on as it does the rich subject of colonial "left behinds," stragglers of history who never returned to their homelands. We get pockets of Dutch in Sri Lanka and Namibia, ex-Southern Confederates in Brazil (where slavery was legal until 1888, 23 years after the War between the States ended), French in Guadeloupe, Germans in Jamaica, and Poles in Haiti. These remnants are themselves disoriented, probably permanently. Some have become inbred; they are largely poor; most pine for a "golden" past they can never know; their relations with both their countries of residence and of origin are tenuous at best.
Breakfast is being served
2 years ago
2 comments:
Nice blog. I've read Lost White Tribes. Sad book.
Thanks for the kind words! Much appreciated.
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