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| To the Last City | 
 enlarge | Author: Colin Thubron
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £14.98 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 586021
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
ISBN: 0701173629
EAN: 9780701173623
ASIN: 0701173629
Publication Date: July 11, 2002
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
The Master in miniature July 15, 2002
52 out of 53 found this review helpful
Colin Thubron's last major oeuvre was In Siberia - highly acclaimed non-fiction about one of the bleakest places on earth. Everyone wondered where he'd go next - both literally and in literary terms. To The Last City is our answer.
In this frightening novel Thubron brings fictional characters to the furthest flung Inca ruins to be found along a precipitous trail amid 'cloud forests', which he has himself taken. The travel writing side is therefore all a Thubron reader would expect - flawless - but enriched in this book by the addition of new points of view. Each of his characters sees their journey and surroundings in their own way. A fat Belgian architect indulging the whim of his doll-like wife in embarking on this 'holiday', sees the mountains as mere 'geology'(an opinion degenerating to rocks viewed as 'turds' as the party's journey becomes distinctly troubling.) Whereas an English journalist longing to do some honest writing, craves to 'possess' the magnificence around him with words. A frail Spanish Deacon, carrying in his baggage all the guilt of a Conquistador's ancestor, seeks to apologise for the savage genocide of his forebears.And for the first time, Thubron speaks through the voice of a woman - Camilla, the journalist's forty-something wife who is at a pivotal stage in her own life. Thubron's lens on the landscape zooms in and out through these different eyes, with their individual self-consciousness convincingly in place, and his own narrative - lyrical and brutal as required - drives the reader steadily forward through the 'devouring and devoured' jungle, and through history.
Central among the themes woven liana-like through To The Last City are questions about the value of writing (does it replace memory?) and why the civilisation of the Incas seems not to have favoured it as an art form at all. Death - ancient and modern - also has a starring role in the tale and sex puts in a refreshingly delicate appearance. But I don't want to give too much away. You'll want to know what happens to each of the travellers when you meet them. Held in your hands, the novel seems frustratingly slim. But this is because Thubron is an expert at elision. He's said what he wanted to say without a spare word.
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