Way of the World (Bouvier) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The exhilaration of the open road and the feeling of connectedness to the natural world that it can produce, is, after all, a common human experience. Simply expressed, it has produced some of mankind’s greatest writing. The Swiss travel writer Nicolas Bouvier explores this territory in his youthful masterpiece, The Way of the World, where he conveys as well as anyone the raw intoxication of being on the road.
New York Times


A genuine masterpiece, an exhilarating, innocent, perceptive and wholly enjoyable young man's travel book, and a discovery of the Asian road that by rights deserves to occupy the same shelf as great classics of the genre such as Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana or Eric Newby's Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.
Financial Times (UK)


The Way of the World is a masterpiece which elevates the mundane to the memorable and captures the thrill of two passionate and curious young men discovering both the world and themselves. Racy and meditative, romantic and realistic, the book is as brilliant as Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts, but with its erudition more lightly worn and as alive as Kerouac's On the Road, though without a whisper of self-aggrandisement.... On every page a gem or two glitters, and the accumulation of colour, detail and inspired metaphor produce an intensely hypnotic effect.... If you read any travel book this year—or indeed the next forty years—this should be it.
Rory Maclean - Guardian (UK)


Bouvier has all the gifts a travel writer could want—curiosity, tolerance, hardiness—but above all he has a poet's sensibility with words. His is a lyrical style that is as pure as spring air.
James Owen - Telegraph (UK)


In the tradition of great travel writing it is beautifully written and works on many levels—being an account of the journey, a meditation on life and an appreciation of the spirit of a place.
Sarah Anderson - Guardian (UK)


Bouvier's recollections of their 18 months of travel captures the timeless nature of what happens when different cultures interact regardless of the events surrounding them. Originally published in 1963 under the title, L'Usage du Monde, the book became a cult classic in France and was translated into several European languages.
Library Journal


Lyrical reminiscences of a footloose journey from Yugoslavia to India, undertaken 40 years ago by the then-25-year-old author of the enchanting The Japanese Chronicles (1992).... Wherever he travels, Bouvier displays an artist's eye for the image-conjuring detail.... Travel writing to be cherished and reread.
Kirkus Reviews