Travels with Herodotus

When in Toronto last week, the day after Book Expo, I went into Book City. I came out with a couple of kids books -- a pop-up of Sendak characters called Mommy which is really quite brilliant, and a Falconer Olivia at the Opera set-up I couldn't resist -- and Kapuscinski's latest non-fiction offering Travels with Herodotus. So far, it's a fairly wonderful memoir of the early Kapuscinski's travels and education, that I am enjoying immensely. Sure to get a tad more press than we will with I Wrote Stone. A couple of reviews can be found here:

Margaret Atwood reflects on the late Ryszard Kapuscinski's life, work, and his recently translated Travels with Herodotus.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,2098537,00.html
A less favorable review of Kapuscinski's The Travels of Herodotus in the Village Voice says that in Travels, Kapuscinski's once brisk and vigorous style has curdled into something effete and ponderous.
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0724,harvey,76944,10.html

So far, I do not find it effete or ponderous. Playful, elegiac, thoughtful, and beautifully translated. A lot on language. The passage I just finished has him in India trying to learn english from a second hand copy of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Anyway, check it out. And keep an eye open for I Wrote Stone in the fall.