In June 1939 Annemarie Schwarzenbach and fellow writer Ella Maillart set out from Geneva in a Ford, heading for Afghanistan. The first women to travel Afghanistan’s Northern Road, they fled the storm brewing in Europe to seek a place untouched by what they considered to be Western neuroses. The Afghan journey documented in All the Roads Are Open is one of the most important episodes of Schwarzenbach’s turbulent life. Her incisive, lyrical essays offer a unique glimpse of an Afghanistan already touched by the “fateful laws known as progress,” a remote yet “sensitive nerve centre of world politics” caught amid great powers in upheaval. In her writings, Schwarzenbach conjures up the desolate beauty of landscapes both internal and external, reflecting on the longings and loneliness of travel as well as its grace. Maillart’s account of their trip, The Cruel Way, stands as a classic of travel literature, and, now available for the first time in English, Schwarzenbach’s memoir rounds out the story of the adventure. Praise for the German Edition “Above all, [Schwarzenbach’s] discovery of the Orient was a personal one. But the author never loses sight of the historical and social context. . . . She shows no trace of colonialist arrogance. In fact, the pieces also reflect the experience of crisis, the loss of confidence which, in that decade, seized the long-arrogant culture of the West.”—Süddeutsche Zeitung
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Introduction A Note on the Text and Translation Part One: Mount Ararat Balkan Borders Therapia Trebizond: Farewell to the Sea Mount Ararat Part Two: The Steppe The Steppe The Prisoners No Man's Land: Between Persia and Afghanistan Part Three: The Women of Kabul Herat, 1 August 1939... The Hind Kush Three Times In the Garden of the Beautiful Girls of Qaisar The Women of Kabul Part Four: The Bank of the Oxus The Neighbouring Village The Bank of the Oxus The Potters of Istalif The Grip to Ghazni Part Five: Two Women Alone in Afghanistan Two Women Alone in Afghanistan Chehel Sotun Part Six: Onward to Peshawar... Onward to Peshawar... Aden, a Morning Vision The Trip Down the Suez Canal Text Sources Afterword: 'My existence in the exile of distant adventure' Roger Perret
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“Above all, [Schwarzenbach’s] discovery of the Orient was a personal one. But the author never loses sight of the historical and social context. . . . She shows no trace of colonialist arrogance. In fact, the pieces also reflect the experience of crisis, the loss of confidence which, in that decade, seized the long-arrogant culture of the West.”
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780857428226
Publisert
2021-05-11
Utgiver
Vendor
Seagull Books London Ltd
Høyde
203 mm
Bredde
127 mm
Dybde
13 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
124
Forfatter
Oversetter