Voyage Around My Room
Joseph de Maistre author Xavier de Maistre author Stephen Sartarelli translator Richard Howard editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published:15th Apr '16
£12.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
In 1790, while serving in the Piedmontese army, the French aristocrat Xavier de Maistre (1763–1852) was punished for dueling and placed under house arrest for forty-two days. The result was a discursive, mischievous memoir Voyage Around My Room, and its sequel, Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room. Admired by Nietzsche and Machado de Assis, Ossian and Susan Sontag, this classic book proves that sitting on the living-room sofa can be as fascinating as crossing the Alps or paddling up the Amazon.
In addition to the Voyage and Expedition, this edition also includes the dialogue “The Leper of the City of Aosta,” a preface by Xavier’s better-known older brother (the royalist philosopher Joseph de Maistre), and an introduction by Richard Howard.
"De Maistre pioneered a mode of travel that was to make his name: room travel. Dressed in pink-and-blue pajamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen." -- Alain De Botton
"The late eighteenth century is when modernity (more exactly, the modernities) began. Sterne, Diderot, Rousseau—among the effortlessly brilliant writers of that incandescent era, there still remains Xavier de Maistre to discover or rediscover. His masterpiece, Voyage Around My Room, is one of the most original and mettlesome autobiographical narratives ever written." -- Susan Sontag
"Funny and deceptively profound." -- The Guardian
ISBN: 9780811222105
Dimensions: 206mm x 130mm x 15mm
Weight: 232g
244 pages