William Barlow

Travel, Memory by William Barlow dives right into the throes of an unstable African country in which an NGO employee is forced to smuggle cash to pay contractors, and from then on, the author beats you up (and himself too) with realities none of us care to acknowledge. At times, you want to stop reading, you want to say, 'enough'! But you can't. The writing hooks you, the words are flawless, the images are compelling.

So you let yourself get twisted up in the knots and unadorned realities of communities in crisis—from Africa to the Middle East—and although there are brief escapes to France, Germany, Australia and the U.S., the author's own unforgiving soul travels with him. He's surrounded by people but seems to suffer chronic loneliness, which he feeds with drink, drugs and sex. He desires to connect, to write. He analyzes and reflects with a naked honesty that leaks melancholy into concise and perfectly worded sentences, to color even unexpected observations so that they cannot possibly be construed as offhand.

Travel, Memory is a man's brutal coming of age over two twisted decades of working for NGOs in Africa and the Middle East. While he is not without empathy, Barlow slices sharply through the irrelevance of many benevolent human endeavors and questions his own. His journey is the self-examination of a solitary man who turns the world inside out in search of himself. "What's the point of describing archeology when I have my personal ruins to dig up?" What he finds, I leave for you to discover. No spoilers here.… (more)