Asian Absences

A lovely volume of travel writing about Büscher's travels in Asia, following up on his classic books on walking through Germany and from Berlin to Moscow.
All of the chapters are atmospheric, almost hallucinogenic, full of shamans, pilgrimages and temples, but the most beautiful to my mind is "The Cricketer", the story of Büscher's voyage on an oil tanker from the UAE to Singapore. The title comes from the shadow practice of an officer on the bridge, but the most arresting image is when the oil tanker sails past and through a fleet of little fishing boats off the southern coast of Sri Lanka - an indifferent colossus scything through a swarm of glow-worms.