The unnamed narrator of this story bums his way from Lebanon to China by way of Greece, Turkey, Syria, southern Russia, Iran, India, and southeast Asia in the 1930s. He meets (and re-encounters) a wide range of eccentrics and expatriates, spends time in a prison, crash lands in India, has several delicately erotic encounters, and generally soaks up life in a variety of cultures. This 1935 debut novel by accomplished but now not widely known American writer Prokosch, managed to evoke highly realistic experiences in lands the author -- then just 27 -- had never visited himself. There isn't much plot or character development per se, but it is richly and sensitively written. The book earned high praise from such authors as Andre Gide and Thomas Mann.
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The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus
