Last month two short pieces of mine went live.
In the most recent issue of The Scofield, dedicated to the Swiss writer Max Frisch, I recommend his compatriot, the wonderful crime writer Friedrich Glauser, as someone to check out once you’ve made your way through Frisch. Glauser had a pretty intense life and he wrote some terrific crime novels.
And in last month’s Open Letters Monthly, I wrote about my favourite travel books, the trilogy Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote describing his travels across Europe on foot in the early 1930s. I’m in good company here: there are lots of great suggestions for you to consider. If you’ve got favourite travel writing, I’d love to hear about it.
The two never met, as far as I know, but I bet they’d have got alone like gangbusters.
Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau 
Favourite travel writing: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Bruce Chatwin, Wilfred Thesiger, Robert Byron (Road to Oxiana), Eric Newby (A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush), Paul Theroux, Colin Thubron, and of course Goethe (Italian Journey) and Johann Gottfried Seume (Spaziergang nach Syrakus/Walk to Syracuse). I like also the books of Andrzej Stasiuk and Christoph Ransmayr which in a broader sense are also travel literature.
Glauser is an amazing author; he had also a big influence on Dürrenmatt (and possibly on Simenon). There is a series of old Swiss black-and-white movies with Heinrich Gretler as Wachtmeister Studer (based on the novels) – excellent stuff!
I’d definitely be curious to see those Studer films!
I’ve meant to read Stasiuk for a long time. Do you have recommendations on where to start?
My apologies, for some reason I forgot to answer your question. A good starting point would be in my opinion either ‘Dukla’, or his travel book ‘On the Road to Babadag’ (containing two long pieces about Albania, which I read with particular interest since I lived there for three years).
Wow, you’ve lived everywhere! I will look for those two. Thanks for the recs.