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Title: Flat and Disppointing
Review: Maybe there are two ways of writing about travel. First, you write about startling things or things that other people normally might not notice. Second,you present a somewhat ordinary world but you do so in high-flown prose that---because of the quality of the writing---carries the reader along no matter what. This journalistic travel book seems one that a publisher might have picked up ONLY because the writer is well known. It is neither well written nor particularly acute in what it sees and reports. Too often there is a grim habit of stereotype, and always there is a languid sense of a prose style that suggests little more than some jottings in a loose-leaf along the way. A Graham Greene brings heart, keen perception, and inspiration to his "Journey without Maps" into Africa, and may other writers encounter people who remain in your mind. Celati just putters along.
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