Traveller: Observations from an American in Exile

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Simon and Schuster, Jun 2, 2009 - Travel - 152 pages
"How could I have known then with no maps acquired and my bags not yet packed that my journey had already begun? ...The tools of a traveler are compass and map. They calculate distances covered and destinations sought but cannot measure the consequences of experiences on a human heart," writes Michael Katakis in his introduction.

Traveller is a collection of letters and journal entries that bring the immediacy of experience together with perceptive reflections of the author's own past. The entries in this volume are not travel guides. They are more personal, like letters from the most desirable sort of friend. The friend carries the listener with him as he meanders through the medina in Fez or into the hills of Gallipoli. His voice is such that listeners can almost smell the herbs and dusty soil of Crete, and always they are introduced to the people he meets along the way.

For anyone curious about the world, and introduced with a foreword written and read by Michael Palin, Traveller is sure to delight, infuriate and, perhaps most importantly, inspire thought about the complex world around them.
 

Contents

Foreword
11
Tango
24
A Beautiful Sandwich
33
Not Today Virginia
46
Witches Dreams and the Satellite
49
Above it All
62
My Kind of Cop
65
Deportation
78
A Sad Anniversary
80
Unconscious
94
Saw My Father Dead Today
110
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Michael Katakis has authored a number of books including, Despatches, The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and, as editor, Sacred Trusts:Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility and Excavating Voices: Listeningto Photographs of Native Americans. His work has been translated into multiple languages and his writing and photography have been collected by a wide range of institutions including, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Library in London and Stanford University’s Special Collections Department. In 1999, Michael was elected ‘Fellow’ of the Royal Geographical Society and in 2001 his, and Dr. Kris Hardin’s exhibition, A Time andPlace Before War, opened at the Geographical Society in London. The British Library acquired Michael’s photographic work for their collection in 2008. The Library is now the repository for his entire work. He lives in France and the United States with his wife, anthropologist Kris Hardin.

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