Eothen (Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East) - Alexander William Kinglake, Jonathan Raban

It took Kinglake seven years before he had finished crafting this `lively, brilliant and rather insolent tale. The physical details of the journey, undertaken in 1834 across the Balkan frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, through Constantinople, Smyrna, Cyprus into the Near eastern cities of Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus, are never as significant as the conversations, chance encounters and attitudes of the author. Packed full of an infectious charm and a youthful delight at the world, it is above all things funny as it lampoons the pomposity of earnest, middle?aged travellers seeking to establish themselves as professional authorities.