A Barbarian in Asia (Paperback)

Description

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“It is superb in its swift illuminations and its wit... [Michaux has] a way of leading you to the unpredictable margins of his sensibility, as when he notes, apropos of the generality of psychic gifts in India, that it makes the distinction between imbeciles and non-imbeciles ' so unsatisfactory'....” —Alfred Kazin, New Yorker

Henri Michaux (1889-1984), the great French poet and painter, set out as a young man to see the Far East. His strange insights and ironic impressions comprise A Barbarian in Asia, presented here in its original version in the classic translation by Sylvia Beach, the famous Paris bookseller.

About the Author

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Henri Michaux (1899–1984), born in Belgium, studied mysticism as a young man and traveled throughout South America and Asia before settling in Paris. He wrote more than twenty volumes of poetry and prose and showed paintings he created under the influence of mescaline. In 1965 he was awarded the French National Prize for Letters but refused the award, saying that it threatened his independence.

Founder of the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare and Co., Sylvia Beach was a luminary in the Parisian literary scene and the first publisher of Ulysses by James Joyce.