Book description
Unflinchingly honest about his family, his failures, his already broken health at the age of sixty?three and the loss of the hopes he once had for himself, Thomsen is also sickened by the corruption and rapacity of our societies, the inequality and the economic destitution. What starts as an almost…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Saddest Pleasure as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Great travel writing requires serious honesty – and there’s no more honest book than this. An aging, crotchety American sets out on a sentimental journey through Brazil after a forced departure from his adopted home in Ecuador. You start out thinking that he’s been the victim of some sort of sketchily explained injustice, but as he travels, he gradually tears more and more strips off himself and your perspective changes. Brutally honest. Thomsen is also remarkably open about his own writerly craft: “let me shift my characters around a bit” he says at one point, revealing the fundamental tension of…
From Tim's list on writing about the real world.
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German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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