LEWIS, NORMAN — The World the World

UK, Picador. 1997. Soft cover with dust jacket, 19.5cm. Book, 293 crisp pp, less than 500g for post. Norman Douglas is indeed interesting & if you enjoyed his "asides" you'll definitely like Norman Lewis. The range of his memoir is wide and includes adventures in Italy (the scene of Naples '44), Sicily (location of his bestselling The Honored Society), Brazil (where he was the first to expose genocide in Amazonia), India (A Goddess in the Stones), Indonesia (An Empire of the East), Burma (Golden Earth), Indochina (A Dragon Apparent), and Cuba (reminiscences of Ian Fleming, Ernest Hemingway, Fidel Castro). review >>> Lewis begins this volume with a description of a chance encounter in the elegant dining car of a train in pre-war Italy, which would lead to a friendship spanning decades. This familiar Lewis combination of a world now disappeared and the importance of genuine friendships, all described in his economic but intensly lyrical style make for a book that is truly engrossing. This book should be required reading on every journalist's training course, if nothing else for its language which is throughout both simple and scintillating. Very Good/None issued.