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In Asia

Posted in Books, Travels by Francesco on June 19, 2009

During my Indian adventure my greatest companion was surely this book of Tiziano Terzani. He was a correspondent for the German journal Der Spiegel who spent most of his life living and traveling around Asia.

The book is a collection of the articles written by Terzani in his 30+ years stay in this continent. The articles are arranged chronologically and divided into sets talking regarding the different countries visited (China, Japan, Sri Lanka, India, …) and each of them concerns a particular event (Tiananmen square’s demonstration in China) or facet (the Yakuzas in Japan) of an Asian country

UN geoscheme subregions of Asia: Easte...

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Terzani’s style is really neat and elegant; every article is beautifully written, pleasant to read and at the same time thought provoking; being in India and living myself an infinitesimal part of Terzani’s experiences made this lecture perfect.
This book covers most of the important events happened in Asia during the years 1970-200 and my only regret about this lecture concerns my ignorance about history. The context provided before every text is very short and I somehow lacked the background to fully appreciate the pieces and place them in a wider frame. If anyone knows a well written book about modern history (not necessarily regarding only Asia) let me know!

To conclude I give to this book my most unreserved recommendation and suggest to everyone wants to know more about this far.

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