‘How may i have known then without maps acquired and my hand bags not yet loaded that my trip had already begun? …The tools of a traveler are compass and map. They calculate ranges covered and locations searched for but cannot measure the consequences of experiences on the human heart,’ writes Michael Katakis in his intro.

Traveller is certainly a assortment of letters and journal entries that bring the immediacy of knowledge together with perceptive reflections from the author’s personal previous. The about Traveller: Observations from an American in Exile entries with this volume are not travel guides. They are even more personal, like words from the many desirable sort of friend. The friend holds the listener with him as he meanders through the medina in Fez or into the hillsides of Gallipoli. His tone of voice is in a way that listeners can almost smell the natural herbs and dusty earth of Crete, and often they are presented towards the people he meets along the way.

For anyone interested in the world, and introduced using a foreword written and read by Michael Palin, Traveller is sure to delight, infuriate and, maybe most of all, inspire thought about the complex world around them.