A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East

Tiziano Terzani

feb 2010 · Distribuido por Crown

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Warned by a Hong Kong fortune-teller not to risk flying for a whole year, Tiziano Terzani — a vastly experienced Asia correspondent — took what he called “the first step into an unknown world. . . . It turned out to be one of the most extraordinary years I have ever spent: I was marked for death, and instead I was reborn.”

Traveling by foot, boat, bus, car, and train, he visited Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Geography expanded under his feet. He consulted soothsayers, sorcerers, and shamans and received much advice — some wise, some otherwise — about his future. With time to think, he learned to understand, respect, and fear for older ways of life and beliefs now threatened by the crasser forms of Western modernity. He rediscovered a place he had been reporting on for decades. And it reinvigorated him.

The result is an immensely engaging, insightful, and idiosyncratic journey, filled with unexpected delights and strange encounters. A bestseller and major prizewinner in Italy, A Fortune-Teller Told Me is a powerful warning against the new missionaries of materialism.

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For thirty years TIZIANO TERZANI has lived in Asia, reporting on its wars and revolutions as Far East correspondent of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Born in Florence, he was educated in Europe and the United States. In 1975 he was one of the few Western journalists to witness the North Vietnamese takeover of Saigon. In 1984 he was living in Peking when he was arrested and expelled for "counter-revolutionary activity."His last book, Goodnight, Mister Lenin: A Journey Through the End of the Soviet Empire, was published in several languages and shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award in 1991. Since 1994 he has made New Delhi his base.