Ilija Trojanow

¿Cómo reaccionar ante la indiferencia del hombre frente a los avisos del planeta de que el mundo está a punto de estallar? El profesor Zeno Hintermeier decide dejar su cátedra y embarcarse rumbo a la Antártida argentina, ansiando encontrar en el último rincón natural del planeta el silencio cargado de verdad que tanto anhela. Pero allí seguirá siendo un excéntrico incomprendido, un lunático obsesivo, un activista peligroso y, sobre todo, un hombre solo, más aislado aún que los icebergs que con tanto afán intenta preservar. Tal vez deba ir todavía un poco más lejos.… (altro)

Those of us curious about what happens during a Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam, can be thankful Trojanow made the journey. He writes with such beauty and grace, it is easy to get caught up in his descriptive words. Take the ritual of wazu, for example. There is a precise way to wash before any kind of prayer. At the end of the complicated process, one is supposed to feel calm, as if in a meditative state before prayer. I felt almost zen-like just reading about the process. I enjoyed learning about the Mumbai tea ceremonies and had a good laugh when Trojanow lost his sandals after a prayer session. Like any good travelogue, there is a decent mix of historical and personal.… (altro)

Reading this book was hard work. Firstly the German writing style is difficult. Secondly there was no drama.
The story gave only a ghostly sketch of Sir Richard Burton, who somehow did not come to life.
No doubt that the man was a fascinating character, a linguist and a traveller who was the first westerner to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. A man who translated the Kamasutra and spoke so many languages, and lived so many different lives.
The book only gives glimpses of his personality through the re-telling of his travels from three different viewpoints: The narrator of the first part is Burton's servant in India, the second part is narrated by officials in the Ottoman empire investigating his trip to the Islamic holy cities and the third part is narrated by the African guide who accompanied Burton and Speke on their trip in East Africa to find the source of the Nile.
The effect of this narration is to give the central character a back-seat, so we only get to see him through the eyes of others. This worked partially well in the first part where the servant was reasonably close to Burton, but in the two other parts it gave only a distant picture of the man and his adventure. The descriptions are long and there are pages upon pages of non-events. The book raised more questions about Richard Burton than it answered and I think I will have to meet him again in another biography.… (altro)