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, The New Yorker
A wild journey to the East narrated by a writer who is without equal in the literature of our time (Jorge Luis Borges)
Henri Michaux (1889-1984), the great French poet and painter, set out as a young man to see the Far East. Traveling from India to the Himalayas, and on to China and Japan, Michaux voices his vivid impressions, cutting opinions, and curious insights: he has no trouble speaking his mind. Part fanciful travelogue and part exploration of culture, A Barbarian in Asia is presented here in its original translation by Sylvia Beach, the famous American-born bookseller in Paris.
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’….
