Experience the far reaches of the world in this eclectic collection of travel essays by acclaimed writer Norman LewisThe Happy Ant-Heap is Norman Lewis's powerful and stylish collection of decades' worth of travel writing. Lewis's deft social commentary captures life from all corners of the world—from the tales of a Cuban fighter pilot to the courtroom trial of the all-powerful Sicilian Mafia, and from oyster divers in Yemen to a flirtation with a possible murderess in Greece. Featuring some of his most remarkable adventures, The Happy Ant-Heap is a whirlwind tour around the globe from a writer at the pinnacle of his craft.

Norman Lewis arrived in war-torn Naples as an intelligence officer in 1944. The starving population has devoured all the tropical fish in the aquarium, respectable women had been driven to prostitution and the black market was king.Lewis found little to admire in his fellow soldiers, but gained sustenance from the extraordinary vivacity of the Italians around him - the lawyer who earned his living by bringing a touch of Roman class to funerals, the gynaecologist who specialised in the restoration of lost virginity and the widowed housewife who timed her British lover against the clock. "Were I given the chance to be born again," writes Lewis, "Italy would be the country of my choice."

Travelling through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the twilight of the French colonial regime, Norman Lewis witnesses these ancient civilisations as they were before the terrible devastation of the Vietnam War. He creates a portrait of traditional societies struggling to retain their integrity in the embrace of the West. He meets emperors and slaves, brutal plantation owners and sympathetic French officers trapped by the economic imperatives of the colonial experiment. From tribal animists to Viet-Minh guerillas, he witnesses this heart-breaking struggle over and over, leaving a vital portrait of a society on the brink of catastrophic change.

Collected between these covers are twenty of Norman Lewis's finest pieces of travel writing, spanning a period of 30 years. He brings us face to face with Castro's executioner, with a tragic Ernest Hemingway and with the unchanged lifestyle of fishermen in an unspoilt Ibiza. He describes the gentle pleasures of Belize, the ferocious blood feuds of Sardinian bandits and the unpleasant duty of repatriating Cossacks to the Soviet Union in 1944.At the heart of the collection is Lewis's famous report on the genocide of the Brazilians Indians, which led to the creation of Survival International - which campaigns for the rights of tribal peoples. This, Lewis felt, was the most important achievement of his professional life.

An engrossing collection of travel essays from esteemed writer Norman LewisAuberon Waugh called Norman Lewis the best travel writer of our age, if not the best since Marco Polo, and here, Lewis's trademark elegant prose is on display, along with his uncanny ability to travel to a place at an important cultural moment. Whether hunting for treasure in Bolivia, discovering forgotten pyramids, or feeding sharks, he draws us into what he calls the seductions of travel with ease, delivering cultural experiences with his usual depth, integrity, and elegance.

Poignant tales from the renowned travel writer's formative yearsIn over six decades as a travel writer, Norman Lewis earned acclaim for his vivid chronicles of life around the globe. In I Came, I Saw,Lewis turns his pen on his own life in an affecting, comical, and always-thoughtful autobiography.He starts with his youth, when, at nine years old, he moved in with his eccentric aunts and his grandfather—a widower whose ambition was to turn him into a proper Welshman. Lewis recounts his grammar-school adventures, explores his relationship with his father, and recalls his introduction to his first wife, Ernestina, with whom he traveled extensively through Europe, Cuba, and America. He describes his time in the British Intelligence Corps during wartime—which allowed him further travels and honed his world perspective—as well as his experiences of fatherhood and life in Italy, which honed it further. I Came, I Saw is a masterwork of self-reflection by one of the...

Despite communist incursions and tribal insurrection, Norman Lewis describes a land of breathtaking natural beauty peopled by the gentle Burmese. This is a country where Buddhist belief spares even the rats, where the Director of Prisons quotes Chaucer and where three-day theatrical shows are staged to celebrate a monk taking orders. Hitching lifts with the army and travelling merchants, Lewis is treated to hospitality wherever he stops in this war-torn land, and reveals a country where 'the condition of the soul replaces that of the stock market as a topic for polite conversation'.

In the late 1940s, Norman Lewis settled in a remote fishing village on what is now the Costa Brava, relishing a society where men regulated their lives by the sardine shoals of spring and autumn and the tuna fishing of summer, and where women kept goats and gardens, arranged marriages and made frugal ends meet. Over the course of three years he watches with sorrow and affection as the villagers struggle to hang on to a way of life unchanged for centuries. How long can their precarious economy, their ancient feuds and traditions – not least the evenings of impromptu blank verse in the bar – hold out against the encroaching tide of package tourism, which sidles insidiously into the village with the arrival of black-marketeer Muga?

Consummate travel writer Norman Lewis's most remarkable travel essays, collected in one volumeYou'd find it of immense interest, I assure you, and full of amazing adventures. So says a British colonial official to Norman Lewis while imploring him to visit Yemen at a time when the country is rarely visited by Western travelers. And indeed, this splendid collection of Lewis's travel essays is full of amazing adventures.Spanning sixty years and many countries, Lewis's writing dives deep into the cultures he visits and brings them to life with eloquent depictions of his personal experiences—from the Huichols of western Mexico to the hunter-gatherer-poet Indians of Paraguay; from the streets of Naples to the steppes of Russia during the Soviet era; and more.

Norman Lewis's fascinating, humorous, and powerful memoir of six decades spent traveling the globeThe consummate gentleman adventurer, writer Norman Lewis spent more than half a century exploring the globe and chronicling the amazing things he found. In The World, the World, with his usual literary deftness and narrative skill,Lewis recounts a life spent traveling.Beginning with a life-altering encounter on a train in 1937, Lewis takes us from his eclectic Gordon Street home in London to the far reaches of Indochina, Vietnam, Guatamala, India, and more. He also documents his time in the British Intelligence Corps, his encounters with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming, and his publishing experiences with Jonathan Cape. At once witty, insightful, and poignant, The World, the World is an essential volume for established Lewis fans and new readers alike.

The Honoured Society describes how the US army returned the Mafia to power in 1944, after Mussolini came close to destroying them. It looks at the Mafia in their homeland - how in attempting to preserve Sicily for the Sicilians in the face of countless invasions it infiltrated every aspect of the island's life, corrupting landowners, the police, the judiciary and even the church. In one chilling chapter Norman Lewis details the escapades of eighty-year-old Padre Camelo, who led his monks on sprees of murder and extortion, frequently using the confessional box for transmitting threats.

From Sumatra to East Timor and beyond, An Empire of the East is a fascinating look at a rapidly changing island nationIn An Empire of the East, renowned travel essayist Norman Lewis takes readers to Indonesia, where some thirteen thousand islands in the South Pacific are each colored with their own unique cultures and histories. With more than three hundred ethnic groups speaking two hundred fifty languages, the warmth and generosity of the island people is matched only by the country's complicated political and social landscape. Lewis's account tells of a country whose remarkable cultures—as well as its flora and fauna—are increasingly shaped by the waves of modernity and global tourism.

The last work of renowned travel writer Norman Lewis: a thrilling adventure through 1930s Spain on a pilgrimage to the tomb of a Spanish ancestorIn the 1930s, Norman Lewis and his brother-in-law, Eugene Corvaja, journeyed to Spain to visit the family's ancestral tomb in Seville. Seventy years later, with evocative and engrossing prose, Lewis recounts the trip, taken on the brink of the Spanish Civil War.Witnesses to the changing political climate and culture, Lewis and Corvaja travel through the countryside from Madrid to Seville by bus, car, train, and on foot, encountering many surprises along the way. Dodging the skirmishes that will later erupt into war, they immerse themselves in the local culture and landscape, marveling at the many enchantments of Spain during this pivotal time in its history.