Discussions
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tatra
Have a few of Thesiger's books, including this one. They are all excellent. Fantastic writer.
posted 5 years ago.
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Muna G
Thesiger lived in the UAE and when he finally went back to live in the UK, he found it to be quite difficult, especially after dedicating many years to living in the desert. He was re-united with the two bedouin friends he had from his youth in his 90's just before he passed away. He never did understand why we started to develop into a cosmopolitan, developed city, leaving the traditional and simple desert life.
posted 5 years ago.
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carambola
The Guardian has a good profile of Thesiger:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/feature/0,,801993,00.html
The profile mentions Thesiger's dislike of Evelyn Waugh. Thesiger particularly disliked the way Waugh portrayed Africans during Haile Selassie's coronation in Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Waugh's description of the event is in the collection "When The Going Was Good":
http://www.shelfari.com/books/254994/When-the-Going-Was-Goodposted 5 years ago.
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Travelogue type of writing, where the main feature is nowhereness and the destiny is somewhere there. The narrator leads us on a needless but at times entertaining trip through the sands of the arabian peinsular, in search of some self-satisfaction and ego acheivement. He returns a little weather beaten, bemoaning the fate of these desert nomads in a condescending way as the world encroaches upon their hidden society. All his observations feel like riches that carry no value, for as he postures on the automobile he cradles a gun in a hand and harkens to some mythical golden age that never existed. Only an outsider would have the ignorance to think he had the right to the good things of the world but these more "innocent" souls should have beebn protected from them. Did he learn anything as he travelled with these God fearing souls? Not really, like the visitor to the zoo, he gawks and gapes and comes away having no true knowledge of the life of the animals but only what he observed. Unenlightening darkness.
posted 4 years ago.
