Eland Publishing Ltd

Collected here, from a period of nearly five decades, are thirty-six of Norman Lewis s best articles. In each, his writing crackles with poker-faced wit and stylistic brilliance. As a witness to his times the good, the bad and the absurd he was unmatched, and his instinct for important events, and moments, was infallible. His range here includes Ibizan fishermen, an interview with Castro s executioner, the genocide of the South American Indian tribes, a paean to Seville and his meeting with a tragic Ernest Hemingway. That meeting was a shattering experience, Norman wrote to Ian Fleming who had commissioned him, of the kind likely to sabotage ambition. Fortunately it didn t, and the articles assembled between these covers are compulsive, hilarious, tender and beautifully written, at times deeply upsetting, and always unforgettable.

News from Tartary is the account of an illegal, six-month journey from Beijing to Kashmir in 1935. The physical resilience which took Fleming and his Swiss companion, Ella Maillart, across some of the world s most inaccessible mountain passes and desert regions was matched by bravery and luck. China was then caught up in a vicious civil war while trying to repel the invading Japanese, while in eastern Turkestan charismatic Muslim warlords were allying themselves with Soviet Russia. None of the foreign journalists who had attempted to report from this region over the previous eight years had come out alive. The relationship between Peter (reporting for The Times) and the adventurous Ella, with their different abilities and character, becomes a source of gentle fascination. For beneath their easy-going charm, both had that sliver of ice required of a writer and had already travelled alone in the region, setting down their separate adventures in Turkestan Solo and One s Company.

Welcome to Paradise opens a window into the hearts of a small group of African would-be emigrants, waiting on the beach in Morocco for a boat that will take them to a new life in Europe. As we shelter with them in the darkness, we hear of the cruelty, misfortune and grinding poverty which has compelled them here, to pit themselves against the dangers of the sea and the coastguards who patrol it. Tense, dramatic and blackly compassionate, Welcome to Paradise is a striking tale of human desperation and of the media-fuelled fantasies of Western life that hold a fatal allure.