Part candid description of a road journey, part a meditation on travel, this is the tale of a life-enhancing journey taken in the 1950s from Geneva to the Khyber Pass on very little money. When Nicolas Bouvier and the artist Thierry Vernet set out, they had money enough for four months of travel and a Fiat Topolino. When their money ran out, they would stop and teach or sell paintings and articles - this happened in Istanbul, Tabriz and Quetta. Then they would base themselves in and around the poorer parts of towns to spend raucous nights listening to gypsy musicians, swapping poetry with Iranian tramps and entertaining other drinkers with songs and a trusty accordion.For a long time The Way of the World has stood as a cult book in France and Switzerland, being called, ‘nothing short of a masterpiece’ by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and this is a re-issue of the translation first published in 1992.