Mediterranean Winter

A beautifully written travel memoir steeped in history by the bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts Mediterranean Winter is a lyrical account of Robert Kaplan's journey in the off season around the Mediterranean, retracing the footsteps of his youth. It takes us from Tunisia, once proud Carthage, rival to Rome, through Sicily, up the Dalmatian coast and into Greece. Kaplan is drawn to places where east and west have intersected: the old haunts of mystics and crusaders. We join him on the ramparts of the kasbah in Tunis and follow him through Syracuse to Segesta, where the treacherous Alcibiades abandoned his Athenian fleet to carnage and defeat. By far the most intimate of Kaplan's many bestselling travel books, Mediterranean Winter is alive with the spirits of the past and closes with a brilliant pilgrimage to Patrick Leigh Fermor, whom Kaplan visits in his hideaway on the Aegean. 'A writer of extraordinary intellect and passion, with a wonderfully lucid way of relating history as a living thing.' San Fransisco Chronicle 'Fascinating' Guardian 'A tempestuous journey, masterfully navigated, riddled with cut-throat action... Kaplan serves up a buoyant discourse, rich in fact and myth, providing safe passage through the deserts of Tunisia and the fiat-ridden Rome, protecting us from the relentless power struggles tragically imprinted on cities over the centuries.' Good Book GuideBiographie de l'auteurRobert D. Kaplan is widely regarded as one of America's leading travel writers and is also a highly influential writer on foreign affairs. He is the author ofBalkan Ghosts, a landmark international bestseller translated into a dozen languages,The Ends of the Earth, andEastward to Tartary, among other bestselling books. (20040922)