Synopses & Reviews
In these eight interconnected travel stories, journalist Gayle Forman traces the trajectory from her relatively comfortable life in New York's Hell's Kitchen to her sometimes extreme--and extremely personal--experiences in some of the most exotic spots on earth
In this extraordinary memoir--now issued in paperback--Gayle Forman takes us with her to the mountain hideaways of Kazakhstan's Tolkien fanatics and inside the townships of South Africa's lost tribe of Israel. She introduces us to a wild assortment of characters: lovelorn Tongan transvestites, charismatic Tanzanian rap stars, precocious Cambodian street kids, out-of-work Dutch prostitutes. In the artful interplay of these eight lively, thoughtful stories, she reveals how all of these diverse lives--as well as our own--are being inextricably altered by the ever-shrinking world that we share. Because, she writes, "To forget the humanity in others is to risk forgetting one's own."
Review
"This is travel through a secret side door; lucky us, we get to go along."--Newsweek "Compulsively readable . . . jam-packed with trenchant observations, drama, pathos, and humor. . . . Wherever Gayle Forman is going next, I want to read about it." --Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink and The Epicure's Lament
About the Author
GAYLE FORMAN is an award-winning investigative journalist who has traveled the world to report for such publications as the New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Glamour, Elle, and Seventeen. She lives in New York City.