THE WAY OF THE WORLD BY NICOLAS BOUVIER

A cult classic, The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier is one of the most beguiling travel books ever written.

The Way of the World: Two men in a car from Geneva to the Khyber Pass by Nicolas Bouvier

Translated by: Robyn Marsak

ISBN: 978-0-907871-538

Format: 328pp demi pb

Place: Turkey, Pakistan & Afghanistan

Thirty-three years ago, John Hatt set up as a publisher creating ELAND BOOKS, a company born at south London. John Hatt’s Eland was the first of a wave of travel lists that emerged in the early 1980s, quickly joined by Century Travellers, the Penguin Classic Travel Library, Picador and Virago. You wouldn’t have wanted to put any money on it, but only the Eland list has endured. Nowadays, E-editions enable our books to be read in parts of the world where bookshops do not exist, but otherwise Eland continues, very much as it first started, with between two and eight new titles a year, and run from an attic. It is a classic tale of the Hare and the Tortoise, or should one say the Leopard and the Eland. For one of the defining characteristics of the Eland is that it is no good at high speeds but ‘can trot along at fourteen miles an hour indefinitely.’  

‘Nicolas Bouvier’s passionate and exhilarating travel stories have in- spired generations of young Europeans onto the road.’  – Rory Maclean

‘Bouvier is that rare author who alerts the reader to the transcendent dimension of travel, by which the genuine traveller is transformed. This courageous alchemy, transmitted on every page, is what makes The Way of the World a masterpiece.’  – Jason Elliot