Traveller

Observations from an American in Exile

Michael Katakis

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN:
  9780743599689
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

"How could I have known then with no maps acquired and my bags not yet packed that my journey had already begun?...The tools of a traveler are compass and map. They calculate distances covered and destinations sought but cannot measure the consequences of experiences on a human heart, " writes Michael Katakis in his introduction. Traveller is a collection of letters and journal entries that bring the immediacy of experience together with perceptive reflections of the author's own past. The entries in this volume are not travel guides. They are more personal, like letters from the most desirable sort of friend. The friend carries the listener with him as he meanders through the medina in Fez or into the hills of Gallipoli. His voice is such that listeners can almost smell the herbs and dusty soil of Crete, and always they are introduced to the people he meets along the way. For anyone curious about the world, and introduced with a foreword written and read by Michael Palin, Traveller is sure to delight, infuriate and, perhaps most importantly, inspire thought about the complex world around them.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Importance of a Lie
• On the Metro
• A Beautiful Ankle
• Transvestites for Bush
• The Invisible Man and the Man on the Moon
• Tango
• I hope the Dog Wins
• Leaving America
• The Sad Garden
• A Beautiful Sandwich
• Class Like Voodoo
• Adieu Madeleine Levy
• The Finest Concert
• Funding Your Own Assassins
• I Rise to the News of War
• I Do Not Like Texas
• Stomach Full of Grappa
• I Hope She Made it to Paris
• Not Today Virginia
• Somewhere in China / I am Lost
• Still Lost in China
• Witches, Dreams and the Satellite
• Where is the Monkey?
• Pillars of Hercules
• Anzac Cove
• A Sense of Foreboding
• Secular? Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
• Art that is Alive
• The Soldier and the Milkshake
• A Sad Family Album
• Above it All
• Savages
• Like Eating for the First Time
• My Kind of Cop
• The Little Girl I Could Not Save
• First Trip to Mecca?
• Another America
• Clouds Hill
• A Place that has Whored Itself
• A Gathering Storm
• The Best Bad Tea in the World
• Where are the Tapas?
• Deportation
• Polite but not Impressed with Americans
• Kris and the Ambassador
• A Sad Anniversary
• Michael and Helen Palin
• Dancing With Death and Mr. Rove
• Gallipoli
• Friends are Fine
• Choice, What Choice?
• Not a Real Place
• What Do You Mean the Embassy is Closed?
• Troubled Land
• Search for God? Perhaps Not
• Unconscious
• A French Twist
• Wall 25 Line 91
• Alan and Kati Lewis
• Truefitt and Hill
• Patrick Hemingway and the Elephant
• Douglas Hardin
• Thelma in Italy
• The Family Business
• The Abbey Bookshop
• Pino and Betty Gargano
• Hey! Where You From?
• Not Another Fish
• Will Take Verbal Abuse for Small Change
• I Saw My Father Dead Today
• Erica
• Morocco, If Only in Dreams
• Iz a Mafia
• If Only George Clooney Could Go to Sudan
• Goats, Lemons and the Ancient World
• Myths, Dreams and a Norwegian Girl
• Quick Change
• A Second Look
• Rage
• Stranger on a Ship
• I’m Working
• Adieu Tangier
• In shaa Allah
• Candy and Conversion
• Narrow Alleys, Staring Eyes
• Ramadan
• Farewell Sweet Sasha
• A Perfect Day in Chantilly
• My True North
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments