Evan S. Connell explores the quixotic obsession with the new, the hidden, the unattainable that burns in an individual's soul.
Each essay is an extraordinary account of passionate pursuit by legendary explorers, visionaries, and seekers compelled by a singular desire. Here we find Marco Polo, El Dorado, Paracelsus, Columbus, the thousands of children in the Innocents' Crusade, Magellan, Mary Kingsley (a Victorian naturalist, ethnologist, sailor, scholar, and guest of cannibals, and Ibn Batuta (an indefatigable explorer of the fourteenth century whose travels in the Arab world and beyond made 'the journey of Marco Polo look like a stroll around the block').
'There's no end to the list, of course,' Connell adds, 'because gradually it descends from such legendary individuals to ourselves when, as children, obsessed by that same urge, we got permission to sleep in the backyard.'
- ISBN10 1473520835
- ISBN13 9781473520837
- Publish Date 28 February 2015 (first published 7 February 2002)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Vintage Digital
- Format eBook (EPUB)
- Pages 288
- Language English