May 312013
Walls: Travels Along the Barricades
In this ambitious blend of travel and reportage, Marcello Di Cintio travels to the world’s most disputed edges to meet the people who live alongside the razor wire and answer the question: What does it mean to live against the walls? Di Cintio shares tea with Saharan refugees on the wrong side of Morocco’s desert wall. He meets with illegal Punjabi migrants who have circumvented the fencing around the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. He visits fenced-in villages in northeast India, walks Arizon
List Price: $ 29.99
Price: $ 29.95
As if Paul Theroux stopped navel-gazing and cheered up a bit…,
A wonderful book about walls. Yes, walls. Not paint drying on them, or even peeling. Graffiti is sometimes involved, as is climbing barbed-wire ones in dozens of T-shirts, turning them into art projects or playing them as musical instruments. Oh, what’s that you say, you have walls? Not like these. When’s the last time you made it to the bleeding Western Sahara or Bangladesh? Well this guy, who yesterday won the best political writing prize in Canada (granted, his top rival was probably the guy who did the comic strip Herman), spent three years going to Buddha-forsaken places in the quest to find out why we build walls (other than the 4 plus a roof for shelter, obviously), how they divide us, how they affect those living alongside them, and how we subvert them. And by that I don’t mean Mexican drug lords making elaborate tunnels underneath so we can all get access to blow for those weekend pool parties I never seem to receive my invitations to. Damned postal service cutbacks. I mean how the human spirit ultimately seeks to unite, not divide, despite the best efforts of the bureaucrats, politicians, law enforcement or just plain arses afraid of someone who looks or thinks differently. A wonderful travelogue full of wit and pith, mirth and worth, light and insight, concrete and, uh, mystery meat. Highly recommended.
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