The Third Tower Up From The Road

The Third Tower Up from the Road is a humorous and entertaining collection of travel essays made up of old favorites as well as new commentaries from Kevin Dolgin’s popular McSweeney’s Internet Tendency column, Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go. The work celebrates the distinctive qualities of locales the world over, and each globetrotting essay focuses on a specific place, capturing the flavors and cultures through individual observations and exceptional experiences. Funny, irreverent, and insightful, these writings eschew the bland, touristy veneer experienced by most travelers as they seek to discover what is special and unique about each destination. Covering a wide range of places and interests, from unusual experiences and humorous traveler’s foibles to voyages that are intensely personal and moving, the selected columns include "The Best Falafel in the World: Beirut, Lebanon," "The Door to Hell: Paris, France," "Kafka’s Erotic Dream: Prague, Czech Republic," "The Nesting Habits of Roman Cars: Rome, Italy," "Of Romans and Pussycats: Provence, France," and "The Third Tower Up from the Road: Huanghuacheng, China." Also featured is "The Corsican Swallowtail: Corsica, France," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The Third Tower Up from the Road is a humorous and entertaining collection of travel essays made up of old favorites as well as new commentaries from Kevin Dolgin’s popular McSweeney’s Internet Tendency column, Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go. The work celebrates the distinctive qualities of locales the world over, and each globetrotting essay focuses on a specific place, capturing the flavors and cultures through individual observations and exceptional experiences. Funny, irreverent, and insightful, these writings eschew the bland, touristy veneer experienced by most travelers as they seek to discover what is special and unique about each destination. Covering a wide range of places and interests, from unusual experiences and humorous traveler’s foibles to voyages that are intensely personal and moving, the selected columns include "The Best Falafel in the World: Beirut, Lebanon," "The Door to Hell: Paris, France," "Kafka’s Erotic Dream: Prague, Czech Republic," "The Nesting Habits of Roman Cars: Rome, Italy," "Of Romans and Pussycats: Provence, France," and "The Third Tower Up from the Road: Huanghuacheng, China." Also featured is "The Corsican Swallowtail: Corsica, France," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

In August 1936 a Hungarian writer in his mid-thirties arrives by train in Venice, on a journey overshadowed by the coming war and charged with intense personal nostalgia. Aware that he might never again visit this land whose sites and scenes had once exercised a strange and terrifying power over his imagination, he immerses himself in a stream of discoveries, reappraisals and inevitable self-revelations. From Venice, he traces the route taken by the Germanic invaders of old down to Ravenna, to stand, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before the sacred mosaics of San Vitale. This journey into his private past brings Antal Szerb firmly, and at times painfully, up against an explosive present, producing some memorable observations on the social wonders and existential horrors of Mussolini's new Roman Imperium. From the Trade Paperback edition.