Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Shipwrecked in Lanzhou

Lanzhou (Lanchow in News from Tartary) is the provincial capital of Gansu and the place from which Fleming and Maillart expect to take to the road for the adventure proper to start.

lanzhou

Sitting at a crossroads between Tibet, Mongolia and Sichuan, Lanzhou has been a stop along the Silk Road for centuries, also thanks to the local micro-climate caused by the local geomorphology. Lanzhou was founded in a narrow valley, between low hills, and close to the Yellow River, making the weather particularly mild. This contributes to the flourishing fruit and vegetable production and market.
And it was in a very important strategic position – controlling not only the trade routes but also a railway node and the crossing of the Yellow River.
In 1920, the city was taken by Feng Yuxiang, a Christian warlord. Continue reading →


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Gore Vidal’s “Thieves Fall Out”

thieves fall outSo how was it in the end?
Gore Vidal’s Thieves Fall Out was a very fast read, and quite a fun one.
While throwing in all of the clichés of the genre, Vidal was able to build a story in such an oblique way that for much of the story the protagonist – small time crook Pete Wells – does not know what  he is doing, and why.
But he’s being paid, he’s sure he can face the dangers, and so he’s going along with the flow.

Wells is a flawed individual, a complicated mix of arrogance and weakness, and he will get more than a taste of true danger during his wild run through the Cairo underworld. Continue reading →


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Shameless adventures

adventure_19350815Do you mind if I rant?
You see, I don’t always call other people cretins, but when I do, it is usually because they pretend to know what they are talking about when they in fact they do not know.

Yesterday I was told that adventure stories – and genre fiction in general – is a second-rate form of cheap entertainment, aimed at housewives and blue-collar working-class brutes that can’t appreciate a good, solid, proper “real novel”.
And the word cretin erupted through my lips before I could think about something more scathing and cruel.

Then I launched in a long-winded rant the gist of which I will now inflict on Karavansara readers.
Because like a guy once said, I suffered for my art, now it’s your turn. Continue reading →


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Arabian Nights Art 3: Abu Kir & Abu Sir

arabian nights italy 1958 2Last installment and last gallery for the 1958 Fratelli Fabbri edition of a selection of tales from the Arabian Nights.

The last story in the book is The Tale of Abu Kir the Dyer and Abu Sir the Barber, and once again it is illustrated by Benvenuti. This is the widest selection of illustrations: the two previous tales got ten images each, but the final tale gets nineteen. And we won’t complain for that!

Once again, if you’d like to read the original, you can check out the version available at Sacred Texts.

For a complete version of the Arabian Nights, Project Gutenberg offers both the Andrew Lang translation, and the “complete” 1890 “Aldine edition”. But the Gutenberg guys really have a wide selection of versions of the book.

Print editions are many and deserve a separate post (maybe, one day).

And now, here’s the gallery.