Download The Liquid Continent Travels Through Alexandria Venice and Istanbul Armchair Traveller Nicholas Woodsworth Books
Download The Liquid Continent Travels Through Alexandria Venice and Istanbul Armchair Traveller Nicholas Woodsworth Books
Download As PDF : The Liquid Continent Travels Through Alexandria Venice and Istanbul Armchair Traveller Nicholas Woodsworth Books
"A beautifully written trilogy."—Wanderlust
Published to critical acclaim in 2008, Nicholas Woodsworth's Mediterranean Trilogy, released originally in three volumes, is now available in a single paperback edition. Combining travel narrative, history, and reflection on contemporary Mediterranean life, Woodsworth finds an intimacy, a garrulous warmth, and a near-tribal sociability that belongs uniquely to the cities on the fringe of this sea. It is neither African, nor European, nor Middle Eastern, but it is identifiable; it is Mediterranean. This sea, he argues, should not be seen as an empty space surrounded by Europe, Asia, and Africa, but as a single entity, a place from whose coastlines people look not outward, to this country or that capital, but inward, over the water to each other. The sea, Woodsworth tells us, has its own cities, its own life, its own way of being.
Woodsworth sets out from Alexandria, discovers the intimacies of Venice rarely witnessed by those on the tourist trail, and then, through Albania and toward the Aegean archipelago, arrives at Istanbul, where he installs himself in a former Benedictine monastery overlooking the Golden Horn. In all these places he finds traces of an older, more sophisticated existence and asks what these cities and their inhabitants owe to the sea.
Nicholas Woodsworth was born in Ottawa, Canada. He was the Africa correspondent of the Financial Times and is the author of Seeking Provence (Haus Publishing, 2008).
Download The Liquid Continent Travels Through Alexandria Venice and Istanbul Armchair Traveller Nicholas Woodsworth Books
"I love that this, originally a trilogy, is now available in a single volume. This is a beautifully written travel narrative, history lesson and reflection on Mediterranean life. I read this right before travelling to Venice and Istanbul myself, and this book made me even more excited to explore these cities."
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The Liquid Continent Travels Through Alexandria Venice and Istanbul Armchair Traveller Nicholas Woodsworth Books Reviews :
The Liquid Continent Travels Through Alexandria Venice and Istanbul Armchair Traveller Nicholas Woodsworth Books Reviews
- I love that this, originally a trilogy, is now available in a single volume. This is a beautifully written travel narrative, history lesson and reflection on Mediterranean life. I read this right before travelling to Venice and Istanbul myself, and this book made me even more excited to explore these cities.
- ***THIS review relates to vol 3 - Istanbul.****
I have only read the Istanbul volume, but if the other two are the same standard, then this is a must-read.
It took me to parts of Istanbul I know quite well from living there. One of those very well-written, engaging reads about a place you know and are fasclnated by.
In getting to Istanbul from Venice (Vol 2), he travels to Albania - this is not long after the end of Communism. It is one weird place, and right off the tourist beat. I found it fascinating.
As in the best of all travel writing, his search for the way that people of different beliefs, ethnicities, histories can live together and get along is a real strength. His warning against nationalism is being ignored around the world. As one of the people he meets talks about "a global existence guided by two things it now lacks - ethics and judgement."
However, there is hope. He says at the end
"Does any generation listen to any earlier generation, whatever the issue? Perhaps we are so certain that the world we're rushing into is so new and so different that the past cannot possibly hold anything for us. I don't believe it. More than ever I had the certainty it was the same old world. But I was under no illusion that ancient Ottoman voices would ever have the ears of today's movers and shakers - even if the entire A-list at Davos were to come and sit themselves down on the Galata Bridge and listen hard. I doubt they'd hear anything at all.
"I reached the end of the bridge and began climbing the steep hill to Saint-Benoit. In some ways it didn't matter if Davos listened or not. A cosmopolitan attitude to the world cannot simply be dictated. But then neither can its opposite. ...the Mediterraneans I'd met in the last six months had too much vitality to let their world become the place we fear it might. For them it was still rich in variety and human possibility. Didn't the culture of the old Mediterranean we so much admire today grow out of times as unpredictable as our own? "
Given that things have got immeasurably worse since he wrote this volume, I find that a useful thought to hang hope on. - After reading Jan Morris, Mark Hudson, Peter Ackroyd, Italo Calvino and Francesco da Mosto on Venice (after a recent trip there), this is my favorite, succinct account of the watery city. Woodsworth manages to get to the heart of the story of what Venice is in short order and with compelling, lively details. I, too, visited the wonderful naval museum and found the bucintoro there beyond words and after the bacilica the most wondrous treasure in Venice.
I can't wait now to go to Istanbul and Alexandria to experience other untraversed (to me) territories. I like the inherent logic of understanding the Mediterranean waters and how the settlements on its shores interrelated, a topic not often made the central idea of a book unless by dry academics. I look forward to traveling its waters by boat some day soon! Woodsworth is a willing aider and abeter for anyone wanting to experience this voyage for real or from their armchair.
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