Traveller's S.
8 total works
This is Dame Freya Stark's account of her third visit to Turkey. Her route was the one which had been taken 22 centuries earlier by Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, and the book aims to provide a bridge into that ancient world. It also offers insights into 20th-century Turkey, along little-used routes through lonely mountain passes, past remote ruins and along the pirate shore, where country people responded gladly to the author's informed curiosity. Dame Freya's other travel books include "Dust in the Lion's Paw", "Coast of Incense" and "A Winter in Arabia".
In 1935, the author set out to explore the wild, desert mountains, the palaces and cities of Hadramaut and travelled the Incense Route inland from the southern shores of Arabia. Along the way she encountered Sultans and Bedouin tribespeople, the harem women of Do'an and the Mansab of Meshed. This is the story of her travels. The author also wrote "Dust in the Lion's Paw" and "The Coast of Incence".
This sequel to "Traveller's Prelude" describes the author's journeys to the East, embarked upon in 1928. Through the medium of letters and extracts from her diary, she describes her life in Baghdad, her experiences in a harem in Damascus, journeys to Persia and a treasure hunt in Luristan. Dame Freya Stark has also written "The Coat of Incense", "Dust in the Lion's Paw", "East is West" and "The Southern Gates of Arabia".
Written just after the Second World War, Perseus in the Wind (named after the constellation) is perhaps the most personal, and haunting, of all Freya Stark's writings. She muses on the seasons, the effect light has on a landscape at a particular time of day, the smell of the earth after rain, Muslim saints, Indian temples, war and old age. Each chapter is devoted to a particular theme: happiness (simple pleasures, like her father's passion for the view from his cabin in Canada); education (to be able to command happiness, recognize beauty, value death, increase enjoyment); beauty (incongruous, flighty and elusive - a description of the stars, the burst of flowers in a park); death (a childhood awareness of the finality of time, the meaningfulness of the end); memory (the jewelled quality of literature, pleasure, love, an echo or a scent when aged by the passage of time). For those who have loved her travel writing, Perseus in the Wind illuminates the motivations behind her journeys and the woman behind the traveller.
This book is the story of the author's cosmopolitan upbringing that shaped her destiny as a travel writer. She was born in Paris and started travelling at an early age when she was carried over the Pelmo Pass at the age of two. By the time she was five she could speak three languages and had lived in several European countries. She became a nurse in the Frist World War and was caught up in the retreat from Caporetto. Afterwards she learned Arabic and mountaineering in Europe. Dame Freya Start has written a second volume of autobiography, "Beyond Euphrates", as well as many travel books including "The Coast of Incense", "Dust in the Lion's Paw", "East is West" and "The Southern Gates of Arabia".