Written in 1990 about his 1988 trip to Mauritania, a West African country slowly succumbing to desertification from the encroaching Sahara, this is a travelogue in the truest sense. Hudson goes to the country, visiting cities, villages, and Bedouin camps, meeting people of all classes, and taking his time to learn about and absorb the uniqueness of each place he visits. He makes friends easily and those friends not only offer him their perspective of their country and fellow men but also direct him on his wide travels. He sees parts of the country not often visited by foreign travelers and while he reports on the people he encounters and what he sees, he works hard to understand everything from a place beyond his own innate prejudices. Mostly he succeeds. The writing is very visual but there are also black and white photographs and line drawings to reinforce the pictures in the reader's mind's eye. The pacing of the narrative is slow, as if the reader is plodding through the sand with Hudson and sometimes that can feel a bit interminable but his genuine interest in the culture and people help to make up for this. Little actually happens throughout the book but Hudson has drawn a richly complex picture of a little-considered-by-the-West country for those curious to learn about it (at least as it was four decades or so ago).
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Review: Travels in Mauritania by Peter Hudson
Written in 1990 about his 1988 trip to Mauritania, a West African country slowly succumbing to desertification from the encroaching Sahara, this is a travelogue in the truest sense. Hudson goes to the country, visiting cities, villages, and Bedouin camps, meeting people of all classes, and taking his time to learn about and absorb the uniqueness of each place he visits. He makes friends easily and those friends not only offer him their perspective of their country and fellow men but also direct him on his wide travels. He sees parts of the country not often visited by foreign travelers and while he reports on the people he encounters and what he sees, he works hard to understand everything from a place beyond his own innate prejudices. Mostly he succeeds. The writing is very visual but there are also black and white photographs and line drawings to reinforce the pictures in the reader's mind's eye. The pacing of the narrative is slow, as if the reader is plodding through the sand with Hudson and sometimes that can feel a bit interminable but his genuine interest in the culture and people help to make up for this. Little actually happens throughout the book but Hudson has drawn a richly complex picture of a little-considered-by-the-West country for those curious to learn about it (at least as it was four decades or so ago).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
A tale of adultery that manages to withhold judgment as it traces the impact on all four people touched by an affair, Kylie Ladd's After...
-
What would you do if you opened the door to find a man you hadn't seen in 14 years standing on your doorstep, a man who disappeared from...
-
Greece has always been one of those places I'd love to see someday. But I, like so many other people, have always focused my future pla...
-
Book clubs can make you go outside of your usual reading choices. This can be wonderful, allowing you to discover books that you would ne...
-
Not too long ago there was a list going around the internet to determine if you are an introvert. I didn't really need to take it to kn...
-
Sometimes the media reports on someone shattering a glass ceiling. The fact that they are reporting on it being broken just goes to prove...
-
Corran Harrington's lyrical fiction, Follow the River Home, is a novella and related short stories centered around Daniel Arroyo, a Vi...
-
This is a big, gorgeous, appealing mix of a book. It's an epistolary novel. It has recipes. It has pictures and doodles. In short, i...
-
When we sit in our comfortable homes, on our cozy couches, warm, dry, and full, it is hard to imagine lives other than our own. Even if w...
-
As the days get hotter and you start to pack your beach bag, you'll want to find appropriate reading and what better to read than a bo...
No comments:
Post a Comment
I have had to disable the anonymous comment option to cut down on the spam and I apologize to those of you for whom this makes commenting a chore. I hope you'll still opt to leave me your thoughts. I love to hear what you think, especially so I know I'm not just whistling into the wind here at my computer.