"Journey through a mystical country where everything is possible and easily arranged" in this 2-part travelogue set in a fictional Mediterranean city of dreams (Los Angeles Times).
"A touching lover letter . . . to life itself"-featuring Last Letters from Hav, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (The Independent)
Hav is like no place on earth. Rumored to be the site of Troy, captured during the crusades and recaptured by Saladin, visited by Tolstoy, Hitler, Grace Kelly, and Princess Diana, this Mediterranean city-state is home to several architectural marvels and an annual rooftop race that is a feat of athleticism and insanity. As Jan Morris guides us through the corridors and quarters of Hav, we hear the mingling of Italian, Russian, and Arabic in its markets, delight in its famous snow raspberries, and meet the denizens of its casinos and cafes.
When Morris published Last Letters from Hav in 1985, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Here it is joined by Hav of the Myrmidons, a sequel that brings the story up-to-date. Twenty-first-century Hav is nearly unrecognizable. Sanitized and monetized, it is ruled by a group of fanatics who have rewritten its history to reflect their own blinkered view of the past.
Morris's only novel is dazzlingly sui-generis, part erudite travel memoir, part speculative fiction, part cautionary political tale. It transports the reader to an extraordinary place that never was, but could well be.
"Jan Morris is to other travel writers what John le Carre is to other spy novelists." -New York Times
"Journey through a mystical country where everything is possible and easily arranged" in this 2-part travelogue set in a fictional Mediterranean city of dreams (Los Angeles Times).
"A touching lover letter . . . to life itself"-featuring Last Letters from Hav, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (The Independent)
Hav is like no place on earth. Rumored to be the site of Troy, captured during the crusades and recaptured by Saladin, visited by Tolstoy, Hitler, Grace Kelly, and Princess Diana, this Mediterranean city-state is home to several architectural marvels and an annual rooftop race that is a feat of athleticism and insanity. As Jan Morris guides us through the corridors and quarters of Hav, we hear the mingling of Italian, Russian, and Arabic in its markets, delight in its famous snow raspberries, and meet the denizens of its casinos and cafes.
When Morris published Last Letters from Hav in 1985, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Here it is joined by Hav of the Myrmidons, a sequel that brings the story up-to-date. Twenty-first-century Hav is nearly unrecognizable. Sanitized and monetized, it is ruled by a group of fanatics who have rewritten its history to reflect their own blinkered view of the past.
Morris's only novel is dazzlingly sui-generis, part erudite travel memoir, part speculative fiction, part cautionary political tale. It transports the reader to an extraordinary place that never was, but could well be.
"Jan Morris is to other travel writers what John le Carre is to other spy novelists." -New York Times
Jan Morris was born in 1926, is Anglo-Welsh, and lives in Wales.
She has written some forty books, including the Pax Britannica
trilogy about the British Empire; studies of Wales, Spain, Venice,
Oxford, Manhattan, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Trieste; six volumes of
collected travel essays; two memoirs; two capricious biographies;
and a couple of novels—but she defines her entire oeuvre as
“disguised autobiography.” she is an honorary D.Litt. of the
University of Wales and a Commander of the British Empire. Her
memoir Conundrum is available as a New York Review Book
Classic.
Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-one novels as well as
volumes of short stories, poems, essays, and works for children.
Among her novels are The Left Hand of Darkness and The
Dispossessed, both winners of the nebula and Hugo awards.
"Roaming a city of dreams." —Michael Dirda, Washington
Post, List of 66 Favorite Books
“After reading Last Letters from Hav, what travel writer would ever
want to report from an actual place? . . . a vigorous literary
hybrid; elegant fiction in its own right but also a respectfully
witty homage to indomitable English travel writers like Lawrence,
Burton and Blanch.”
—Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times
“A touching love-letter, not to an Invisible City but to life
itself. Morris has penned a fable about an imaginary abroad to
teach us about the here and now.”
—Peter J. Conradi, The Independent
“Jan Morris has marshaled reportorial insight and literary
flair to describe nearly every interesting place on the planet.
Unique among them is Hav, which she revisits in her latest, perhaps
most insightful book yet.”
—Donald Morrison, Time
“Taken for the real thing on its first publication in 1985, this
faux-travel memoir prompted fruitless calls to confused travel
agents. It's no wonder: Morris's imagination is a marvel, her
spectral country fully realized and fascinating. Hav, an eastern
Mediterranean peninsula, rises believably in the mind, with its
city skyline of onion domes, minarets, and one incongruous pagoda
along with its glorious and complex history. Hav's past is
ingeniously, believably intertwined with real events; its present
is realistically faded and isolated, adding to the eerie feeling
one gets of spying on a lost world.” — Publishers Weekly
"The city’s full story — insofar as the full story will ever be
known — can be found in this handsome paperback. Still, most
readers are likely to prefer “Last Letters From Hav,” that
beautifully written, nostalgic excursion to the final station stop
on the Mediterranean Express, the Hav where Eric Ambler might have
set one of his atmospheric spy thrillers of the 1930s or where a
doddering Ruritanian prince might try to cadge a glass of
champagne. That romantic down-at-heel city no longer exists, if it
ever really did. Alas, the Holy Myrmidonic Republic — under various
names — is all too real." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
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