Narrative
The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman
Einsame Weltreise
Alma Karlin · 1929
Synopsis
The account of the first four years of the round-the-world journey that Alma Karlin undertook alone in November 1919, with a typewriter and a dictionary. From Europe to South America, then via California and Hawaii to Japan, the goal of her journey, and on to China, she lodges modestly, away from Europeans, earns her living as an interpreter and language teacher, and observes with an ironic eye the daily life of the countries she passes through.
Context
Written in German, the narrative came out in 1929 from Wilhelm Köhler, the first of three volumes published up to 1933. Selling more than eighty thousand copies and reviewed by more than a hundred newspapers, including the New York Times, her travel books were translated into English, French and Finnish. The traveller also recounts the harassment and threats she faced on the way. The book appeared in Slovene in 1969 and was reissued in German by Aviva, in Berlin, in 2019.
Who it is for
For following, from South America to China, a fearless traveller who lives by her languages and her pen.
Prizes and reception
Katrin Hillgruber praised in 2019 her courage and a real pleasure of reading; Annina Bachmeier noted in it a sense of European superiority.