Strange Bewildering Time

Readers will marvel at this nostalgic travelogue.

* Publishers Weekly *

Providing an intimate glimpse of far-flung regions during times of change, just before some regions became inaccessible to Westerners ... An engrossing travelogue with introductions to the Middle East and Central Asia, Strange Bewildering Time is nostalgic and thoughtful-a paean and a lament for a time long gone.

* Foreword *

A book often worthy of comparison with such enduring classics of travel literature as Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between The Woods And The Water and Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia.

* Montreal Gazette *

A riveting read ... vivid and thoughtful.

* Winnipeg Free Press *

Abley masterfully navigates his acknowledgement of his innocent self as a foundation for the book while introducing witty and philosophical remarks that allow the reader to reevaluate the authority of the narrative lens. [Strange Bewildering Time] is a remarkable time capsule of culture and circumstance wrapped up in an enticing story.

* McGill Tribune *

Abley's story is simultaneously immediate and retrospective. The journals he kept during his travels offer scenes of vivid detail, while the distance traveled in time allows him to see ironies his 22-year-old self could not have fathomed. The past was a strange, bewildering time-but time itself is strange and bewildering ... The blessing of this book is that Mr. Abley's curiosity and compassion were not lost along the way.

* Wall Street Journal *

A fascinating chronicle ... Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail charts the dissipation of hopes at the end of an era.

* Literary Review of Canada *

Gorgeous and lyrical ... Strange Bewildering Time is ... a meditation on the nature of memory, time and self-knowledge, as well as an account of a region on the brink of turmoil ... There is poetry on every page.

* Montreal Review of Books *