Romance of Elsewhere: Essays

by Lynn Freed

Overview

"A marvelous collection." —The New York Times Book Review

Traversing decades and continents, The Romance of Elsewhere captures the dilemma of the expat with Lynn Freed’s signature honesty and humor. She takes on subjects as disparate as Disneyland, lovers, ecotourism, shopping, serious illness, and the anomaly of writers who blossom into full power only in old age. Freed's new collection further establishes her as a renowned voice in memoir and the exploration of identity.

"If Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz had a literary love child, she would be Lynn Freed—or, at least, the resulting book would be Lynn Freed’s essay collection, The Romance of Elsewhere . . . in equal turns funny, wise, and sardonic." —Bustle

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640091597
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	02/12/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Lynn Freed has published seven novels, a collection of short fiction, and a collection of essays. Her work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Her honors include the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award in fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, two PEN/O. Henry awards, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Born in South Africa, she now lives in Northern California.

Table of Contents

The Romance of Elsewhere

Keeping Watch

Useful Zulu Phrases, 1986

Gloria Mundi

Multiple Choice

Letter from London

Caveat Viator

It’s a Small, Unnatural World

The Beach of the Lost World

Honky, Napoleon, and the Empress Wu

Inheriting the Past

A Stranger in My House.

Viva Mandela!

Running the Smalls Through

Locked In

Happy Birthday to Me

Ignorance Chic

Letter from Texas

Doing No Harm: Some Thoughts on Reading and Writing in the Age of Umbrage

When Enough Is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Romance of Elsewhere

"Freed approaches the world—and her prose—with the cleareyed, forthright wonder required of the most committed of travelers . . . Elsewhere she speaks eloquently of travel's power to transform . . . Freed is also one of the funniest writers around . . . [A] marvelous collection." —The New York Times Book Review

"If Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz had a literary love child, she would be Lynn Freed—or, at least, the resulting book would be Lynn Freed’s essay collection, The Romance of Elsewhere . . . The collection of 20 previously–published essays spans decades and continents, and is in equal turns funny, wise, and sardonic; charting both Freed’s evolution as a traveler and her evolution as a writer. Travelers and readers seeking an unusually un–romanticized take on wandering the world will love it." —Bustle

"Her observations—on travel and writing, achievement and identity, Disneyland and aging—are revealing, and her drive to keep moving is unflagging." —The Mercury News

"Wise, evocative, and darkly humorous . . . This collection evokes different moods, different eras, and different places with an astute, frank, and pitch–perfect narrator." —Publishers Weekly

"Wanderlust is what ties these funny and astute personal essays together; the book is about what it means to have an insatiable hunger for experience . . . This is travel literature as memoir, drolly covering the scope of a restless creative life." —Kirkus Reviews

"Fans of Freed will enjoy reading (or rereading) these short works. Readers unfamiliar with her may find her, by turns, discerning or dyspeptic." —Booklist

"No one writes funnier, more acutely observant, frank, and intelligent personal essays than Lynn Freed. If her skeptical, sardonic voice amuses us with every line, it is largely because she is a grown–up in a culture of adolescence, who has done her psychological homework and taken the full measure of her experience, mistakes included. In this, her best nonfiction collection, you will come to know her narrator as one of the most nuanced and sophisticated characters in contemporary literature, and in the process make a new friend." —Phillip Lopate, author of A Mother's Tale

From the Publisher