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Too rambling	Customer Rating:
I had a hard time following this book. It could be in part that I've never read any of Lewis's travel pieces so I came to his memoir without any forknowledge of him. While he seems to have lived a very interesting life I just didn't take any pleasure in it as he jumped from subject to subject. I really would have preferred a more logical outline to the book.

Civilised urbane man and travel writer extraordinaire

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At the end of this splendid autobiographical travel book, the author explains his compulsion to travel to his Brahmin companion "It's the pull of the world. I spent most of my childhood on my own, and some of it was in the mountains of Wales. I would go exploring with the idea in my head that the farther I was from home the better it would be. The next valley would always be wilder. The lake would be bottomless, and I would find a mysterious ruin, and there would be ravens instead of crows in all the trees. Now it's not just the Black Mountains of Dyfed, but the world." In this book that pull takes him to a bleak, windswept ancient fort in a bay in South West Wales where he writes; to Cuba where he meets an expatriate American official executioner, former Macy employee; to the exquisite countryside of Vietnam of the 1950's; to Bangkok and its sex industry; to Brazil and, in concert with one of the great photo-journalists in history Don McCullin, recalls their expose to the world of the genocide against tribal peoples of Brazil, and demonstrates the power of writing and the good that can come therefrom. His opinions include his opposition to the destructiveness of Protestant fundamentalist sects as missionaries and disdain for the barbarians of Essex in the 1960's riding to the local hunt willy nilly over gardens. His insights are sometimes revalatory - he analyses some speeches of Castro and finds them sprinkled with jokes and quotes from Burke, Rousseau, Juvenal, and Shakespeare and claims Castro is the greatest orator since Demosthenes. This contrasts remarkably with the impression I gained from the American press over the years who simply described his speeches as interminable and boring. What a difference an open mind can make to a perspective on the world. His travel companions included Lord Snowden who is revealed somewhat as a spoiled and moody but talented adolescent. His writing skill I would compare to Somerset Maugham but without the snobbery and sarcasm. He is one of the most graceful and skilled travel writers in the language. Pervading all is his sense of graciousness, humanity, and generosity of spirit. The World, The World is a wonderful read.

A great man

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I discovered Norman Lewis through an article by that other great travel writer Pico Iyer in his "Tropical Classical" collection. "The World, the World" is an excellent introduction to an extraordinary travel writer, man whose life has to be read about to be believed. This is a man totally in tune with his times both at home and abroad (his description of his English village is as powerful as his writing on Cuba and the plight of the Amazonian Indians). There's also a great deal of humour here, particularly when Lewis describes his travels with Lord Snowden in Peru. Highly recommended.

A true travelers wonderful odyssey

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What a treat this book was! I discovered Norman Lewis years ago --and have read most of his novels (which I will now go back and re-read). He makes travel as exciting and involving as, of course, it is and along with Pico Iyer makes everyday that I sit behind my desk or hit my computer one less day of adventure or learning. He manages to be so modest about his achievements and his innante curiousity while presenting a panorama of travel thst is as interesting as any travle writing I have ever read --and it makes you thirst for more and more detail about his experiences throughout the world..highly recommend this for anyone who has the slightest essence of wanderlust!

ANOTHER WINNER FROM THE WORLD'S BEST TRAVEL WRITER

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It is incredible that Norman Lewis is not better known in the USA. Anyone who has read anything by him immediately realizes that he is the greatest travel writer on earth and one of the world's finest living authors. He is vastly superior to people like Paul Theroux and Jan Morris. And as a travel writer he is much better than V.S. Naipal. Among younger writers Pico Iyer's approach is perhaps the closest to Lewis's. But Iyer can not yet match Lewis's unsurpassable gifts of observation, lucid style and humane empathy for the people and lands he visits. In my opinion the only current writer to compare to Lewis is the Polish writer Ryzcard Kapucinski. And while it may be his translators' fault, Kapucinski's books are not as satisfyingly well rounded as Lewis's.