Written just after World War II, Perseus in the Wind (named after the constellation) is perhaps the most personal, and haunting, of all Freya Stark's writings. Putting together memories and reflections, "harvested from life and accident", that have carried her through her travels, Stark muses on the seasons, the effect light has on a landscape at a particular time of day, the smell of the earth after rain, Muslim saints, Indian temples, war, and old age. Each chapter is devoted to a particular theme: Happiness (simple pleasures, like her father's passion for the view from his cabin in Canada); Education (to be able to command happiness, recognize beauty, value death, increase enjoyment); Beauty (incongruous, flighty, and elusive - a description of the stars, the burst of flowers in a park); Death (a childhood awareness of the finality of Time, the meaningfulness of the end); Memory (the jeweled quality of literature, pleasure, love, an echo or a scent when aged by the passage of time).

Woven throughout this beautifully-crafted book are references to Stark's many travels, from Asolo to Aden, Iran to India. For those who have loved her travel writing, Perseus in the Wind illuminates the motivations behind her journeys and the woman behind the traveler.

Freya Stark (1893-1993), "the poet of travel", was the doyenne of Middle East writers and one of the most courageous and adventurous female travellers in history. She explored Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Southern Arabia, where she became the first Western woman to journey through the Hadhramaut. Usually solo, she ventured to places few Europeans had ever been. She received the title of Dame and her many, now classic, books include Travels in the Near East, A Winter in Arabia, The Southern Gates of Arabia, Alexander's Path, Dust in the Lion's Paw, East is West and Valleys of the Assassins.

"One of the finest travel writers..." -- The New Yorker

 

"It was rare to leave her company without feeling that the world was somehow larger and more promising. Her life was something of a work of art… The books in which she recorded her journeys were seductively individual… Nomad and social lioness, public servant and private essayist, emotional victim and mythmaker." -- Colin Thubron, The New York Times

 

"Dame Freya’s was a passionate imagination, and her embrace of landscape was fierce... [She] was often called a “travel writer”. The adjective, however, limits the accomplishment." -- The New York Times

 

"[Freya Stark] writes angelically in the great tradition of Charles Doughty and T. E. Lawrence. The pulse quickens as you read, because she can bring the sights and sounds of incredible countries before you in the twinkling of an eye." – The New York Times Book Review

 

"She has written the best travel books of her generation and her name will survive as an artist in prose." -- The Observer