Danube

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  • Author: Claudio Magris
  • Publisher: Harvill Press
  • Catalogue: 94608
  • Size: 13x20cm
There is something about the art of travel writing that seems to bring out the very best in the most skilful practitioners. The late Bruce Chatwin produced some of his most incandescent prose in his travel books (some would say even more so than in his novels), and the legacy of this kind of non-pareil work may be found in Claudio Magris' Danube, a book which seamlessly combines sharp descriptive information with prose of the greatest transparency.

Magris (whose amazing breadth of knowledge and limitless curiosity are evident on every page) takes the reader on a colourful journey from the source of the Danube in the Bavarian hills through Austro-Hungary and the Balkans to the Black Sea. At every stage of this voyage from the past to the present, Magris conjures up all the atmospheric associations of the houses, monuments and great personalities (from Marcus Aurelius to Kafka) and, in the process, produces a richly drawn picture of central Europe and a culture rich in the influences of the East and West.

His greatest passion, however, is people: poets, singers, murderers, emperors, Dracula, Kafka, Wittgenstein, Josef Mengele - all human life is here. And it makes doubly fascinating reading for having been written back in 1986, when brutes like Ceaucescu were still in power and the iron curtain was still in place, though beginning to tremble slightly now in the wind of history.

Magris effortlessly incorporates his encyclopaedic knowledge into the kind of book that both recreates a whole continent and deeply inspires the reader to investigate this territory. However, although he is certainly erudite, and not afraid of displaying his erudition, he also has a fine sense of humour and an eye for the absurd.

In fact, to call this a travel book is an inadequate attempt to categorise something that can really only be judged as fine writing.