Danube

Claudio Magris

Editions

Review

This brilliant, seminal work is much more than just a travel book.  He takes us on a journey along the river of course, but it is the history and culture of the regions through which the river passes that really concern Magris, and the river itself feels more like a device for holding the disparate material together.  Houses and monuments pass before us, Kafka, Canetti and Wittgenstein, the idea that there is a tap at the source which someone left running...

It is a dizzying, exhilarating parade, but what I think is most interesting about this book (without wishing to denigrate the vast amount of information it contains), is the style.  Although filtered through a translator (but the translation is superb), the prose is what drives the book and guides our perceptions, as with Sebald in The Emigrants pbk £7.99 and The Rings Of Saturn pbk £7.99.  Constantly allusive and rich, it brings to life not only what is and was the case, but also a sense of what might have happened, and this sense of possibility and uncertainty is intrinsic to the region - as it is to the author's vision of the world.  For like all the best travel books, this has as much to do with the inside of the author's head as what he sees in the world. - review by Johnny de Falbe