Great Journeys - Viajes alredor de mi cuarto
Para quien le gusta viajar en su imaginación, acaba de salir una nueva colección de Penguin, con el mismo formato y con unos títulos seleccionados con el mismo criterio exquisito que la anterior colección de ensayo, Great Ideas, también de Penguin.
Que puedo decir? Great Journeys reúne una serie de verdaderas perlas de la literatura de viajes universal, con bonitas portadas, el formato ideal para llevarlos encima y deliciarse con la lectura en cualquier momento robado, y a un precio muy asequible.
En fin, una colección que da gusto sólo de imaginar las aventuras que se encierran en cada uno de estos libritos elegidos a dedo.
Aquí está una muestra:
Snakes with Wings and Gold-Digging Ants
Herodotus
So much of what we know of the Ancient World comes from Herodotus that he will always remain the greatest of historians. But in addition such a large part of the entertainment value of the Ancient World comes from his enormous, omnivorous, sometimes credulous appetite for stories of distant lands and strange creatures.
In the heart of the Amazon Forest
Walter Henry Bates
One of the most impressive of all Victorian scientists but also a marvellous writer, Bates' account of his years in the upper reaches of the Amazon is almost too good to be true - a great monument to human inquisitiveness as he battles great hoards of malevolent reptiles and insects in his quest for ever more obscure specimens on ever more narrow and creeper-choked tributaries.
The Cobra's heart
Ryszard Kapuscinski
One of the most brilliant journalists of the postwar world, Kapuscinski (born 1932) spent decades criss-crossing Africa, witnessing the horrors of a continent ravaged by imperialism and its aftershocks. Humane, evocative and magical, The Cobra's Heart makes the case for Kapuscinski as a great writer as well as a great journalist.
A journey to the end of the Russian Empire
Anton Chekhov
Overwhelmed by what he felt was the worthlessness of his great success as a writer, Chekhov decided to leave everything behind him and go to the far reaches of Siberia - to the terrible Russian penal colony on
Fighting in Spain
George Orwell
For an entire generation, the Spanish Civil War was the ultimate test of commitment and courage as Communism and Fascism faced each other across
Escape from the Antarctic
Ernest Shackleton
Although Shackleton's (1874-1922) epic expedition to reach the South Pole was a complete disaster, it was rescued from absurdity by his heroic, terrifying crossing of the Southern Ocean in a small boat to a whaling station on
Can-cans and cities of ash
Mark Twain
One of the great derisive monuments to the imbecilities of the tourist experience, Mark Twain's account of his tour with a group of fellow Americans around the sights of Europe is both hilarious and touching, Twain's exasperation and dismay at the phoney and exploitative being matched by his excitement and pleasure in the genuinely beautiful.
Hunt for the Southern Continent
James Cook
On the second of his three great voyages, Cook took on the most frightening of all his challenges - to travel as far south as possible, to regions never before explored, in the hope of finding a new great continent which could be settled by the British. He found the continent - but it was horrifically different from what had been hoped for.
Jaguars and electric eels
Alexander von Humbolt
A great, innovative and restless thinker, the young Humboldt went on his epochal journey to the New World during a time of revolutionary ferment across
En fin, se trata de 20 títulos, de los cuales sólo dos escritos por mujeres - Mary Wortley Montagu e Isabella Bird son las dos unicas aventureras contempladas en esta colección - y todos prometen diversión por los cinco continentes.
