Alice Stephens – Flung

A Journey Through the Foodiest Country on Earth, Family in Tow

Alice Stephens — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 18:01:00 +0000

There’s a joke told among expats in Japan that newcomers deem themselves experts in the enigmatic country after a week and write a book about it after a month. The library is filled with these books. Dave Barry has one. So does Will Ferguson. Add another title to the list, Michael Booth’s Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family’s Journey Through the Belly of Japan. The author freely admits that before he embarked on his three-month odyssey, he had “no definable […]

Source

‘Tyler’s Last’ by David Winner: A Round-the-World Paean to Patricia Highsmith

Alice Stephens — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:37:51 +0000

On September 5th, 2001, Tyler, the eponymous character of David Winner’s metafictional novel Tyler’s Last, scrambles up a steep, garbage-strewn incline in a Spanish beach town called La Porqueria, which translates to filth in English. That’s funny, because for all its in-country charms, Spain abounds in overdeveloped coastal towns inundated by sun-starved European tourists. Tyler, an elderly American conman whose duties sometimes stray into murder, has retreated to La Porqueria after the Italian government shut down his money laundering business. […]

Source

Fog and the Faroe Islands

Alice Stephens — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 00:11:14 +0000

At a point midway between Norway and Iceland, where the cold North Atlantic meets the even more frigid Norwegian Sea, a gorgeous huddle of islands sits subject to the vagaries of harsh Nordic weather. The Faroe Islands, 18 of them in all, comprise a self-governing territory belonging to Denmark. Along with their abundant rugged beauty, wild seascapes, pitch-tarred timber houses with grass roofs, and more sheep than people, the Faroes offer about 300 rainy days per year, and getting there […]

Source