Reviews for The World, the World

The average rating for The World, the World based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-16 00:00:00 Duncan Peters The second part of Norman Lewis's autobiography. The first part, 'I Came, I Saw' covers his childhood (mostly) and is one of the funniest books I've ever read. This one is nowhere near as interesting, and mostly interesting in providing some background to his travel books. As ever, he's particularly incisive when writing about South East Asia, but the rest of the book feels like something written at the request of his publishers. One for the completists.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-14 00:00:00 William Gluck One of the reviews on the cover of Norman Lewis's second volume of memoirs, by Noel Malcolm, says 'One of the greatest - and most unegotistical - travel writers of our age'. I can only agree. Everything I've read by this wonderful writer has conveyed to me a soul of great compassion, reason and humility. Would love to have met him. Having witnessed, in a small way, the effect of mass tourism on Spain (my aunt owned a camp-site in a small fishing village on the Costa Dorada where we used to spend childhood holidays), I found Chapter Fourteen particularly poignant. Here's a small excerpt: 'In 1950, with the war at an end, Spain was a country drained of resources of every kind. To some extent its culture had been preserved by poverty and isolation, but this, too, began to lose its uniqueness as the great flood of foreigners poured in, exhibiting life-styles so different from those of the Spanish themselves. Most foreigners remained untouched by their brief contact with the Spanish way of life, but the delicate and subtle culture of the host country suffered increasing damage by its exposure to alien customs.' He goes on to write in a similar vein about the effects on Thailand. Well worth reading.