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25.06.2010
Travel Book of the Moment —
I’ve just finished A Fortune Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani about his earthbound travels through Asia in 1993. That year, a fortune teller foretold he would die in a plane crash and warned him against flying. So he journeys by land and sea, exalting the value of ‘slow travel’.
In each place he seeks out a fortune-teller, a shaman or an astrologer, and battles with his scepticism and their predictions. Terzani, Der Spiegel’s foreign correspondent for many years, makes for an enjoyable travelling companion, although at times he can be rather anti-progress. Still, his vivid descriptions and ruminations on life, politics and spirituality kept me gripped to the end.