Friday, April 5, 2013

Eric Hansen, Motoring with Mohammed ***

The first few chapters of this travel book are awesome. They describe the author's unintentional visit to Yemen in 1978, as a crew member on a shipwrecked yacht. The story of the accident, their time on a desert island, and eventual rescue is told with a perfect voice, both insouciantly adventurous and funny. (Hansen's style seems somehow like the British adventurers of old, even though he is an American.)

Hansen returns to Yemen over a decade later on a quixotic quest to retrieve the travel journals that he buried in the island sand before his rescue. These chapters are more typical of the travel genre. Like the author himself, I found my attention adrift during the middle section of the book as he wanders the capital of San'a. The final few chapters show some of the strength of the first few as he visits the mountains of the north and resumes his attempts to retrieve the journals.

So: By all means, read and enjoy the first four chapters. The rest is optional.

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