A Quiet Evening
The travels of Norman Lewis
Here, like a treasure chest, are the polished gems of a whole life of writing on the road, reflecting a world now totally lost to us. From Yemen of the Imams to bandit chieftains, Neapolitan men of honour and tribal chieftains in Central America, as well as darker scenes: the doomed cultures of French rule in Indo-China, Cossacks being sent home to their death and the quiet holocaust of the indigenous peoples in the jungles of South America. This is a book of immense range and power, informed by an extraordinary lightness of touch: humour, humanity and the telling detail.
‘He really goes in deep like a sharp polished knife. I have never travelled in my armchair so fast, variously and well.’ – V.S.Pritchett, New Statesman
‘Lewis is such a fine and amusing writer – and also such an intensely moral and humane one – that he can make even the most horrible situations both bearable and instructive.’ William Dalrymple, Sunday Times
‘A truly remarkable and admirable author. The man is simply amazing.’ – Harry Ritchie, Mail on Sunday
Norman Lewis wrote thirteen novels and thirteen works of non-fiction, mostly travel books, but he regarded his life’s major achievement to be the reaction to an article written by him entitled ‘Genocide in Brazil’, published in The Sunday Times in 1968. This led to a change in the Brazilian law relating to the treatment of Indians, and to the formation of Survival International, the influential international organisation which campaigns for the rights of tribal peoples. He later published a very successful book called The Missionaries (1988) which is set amongst the Indians of Central and Latin America.
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