Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117002 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 194 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Located on a narrow, mountainous finger of Italy hard by Croatia and Slovenia, the port city of Trieste is little-visited and seldom in the news. As Jan Morris, who first came to Trieste as the English soldier James Morris in 1945, writes, "It offers no unforgettable landmark, no universally familiar melody, no unmistakable cuisine, hardly a single native name that anyone knows." Yet, as historian and travel writer Morris ably demonstrates in this homage to one of her favourite cities (others about which she has written are Hong Kong, Sydney, New York, and Venice ), Trieste has many charms. Its history is foremost among them, thanks to the city's former role as the sole port of the otherwise-landlocked Austro-Hungarian empire, which housed a small fleet there--a fleet which, from time to time, would sail off to make war against the Ottomans or the Italians. At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste had grown to international importance as an entry point into Central Europe, so much so that it was referred to as "the third entrance of the Suez Canal". Trieste briefly took centre stage at the onset of the Cold War, when Marshall Tito claimed it for Yugoslavia; it narrowly avoided being enveloped by the Iron Curtain. Morris tells all these stories and more, bringing the city's past to life; no one should be surprised if Trieste sees more visitors thanks to her spirited study.

Yet Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is also a work tinged with melancholy. That befits the city's faded glory, but it also has to do with the sad fact that this will be Morris's last book--or so she promises. Let's hope she changes her mind. If not, however, this serves very well as the capstone of a distinguished career. --Gregory McNamee

Review
'I don't think there's a writer alive who has Jan Morris's serenity or strength.' Paul Theroux

Bookshops will, one hopes, order many copies of Trieste. Not simply because it's a beautiful meditation on a suggestive subject; but because it's two kinds of book, and belongs on two different shelves. Primarily it is a travelogue. But, at a deeper level, it's autobiography. This small 'free port', 'open city', and 'home of exiles' on the Adriatic is an image for the author herself. Himself, as James Morris was, when he first went there, as a British officer, in 1946 (true to its history, there was a tug-of-war as to which side of the Iron Curtain Trieste would fall after World War II). As Morris says in her epilogue: 'Much of this little book has been self-description. For years I felt myself an exile from normality.' For those coming to Morris for the first time, the book is prefaced by 'A Necessary Explanation': 'Jan Morris lived and wrote as James Morris until she completed a change of sexual role in 1972.' In other words, 'Trieste, c'est moi'. Exile can be stimulating but is always unhappy. The name Trieste carries with it an accidental association with 'tristesse'. As Morris puts it: 'Aristotle, I have been told, believed that every interesting man possessed a streak of melancholy. I feel the same about cities. Melancholy is Trieste's chief rapture.' Bonjour Trieste. As a travel book, Trieste is entertaining - primarily for the fascinating vagrants who have, usually in transit, called it home. Two great writers dominate: James Joyce and Italo Svevo. There are lesser glories. I did not know, for example, that Sigmund Freud spent time there, doing research on the sexual propensities of eels. As Morris observes, the young women of Vienna turned out to be richer territory. Review by John Sutherland (Kirkus UK)

Popular historian Morris ("Lincoln", 2000, etc.), the subtlest of travel writers since the 1950s, turns in what she has announced is her final book: a meditation on the crossroads city of Trieste. Trieste is an Italian city bordering Croatia and Slovenia, on a finger of land on the northern shores of the Adriatic Sea. Once, it rivaled Hong Kong as a great commercial port, a crucial outpost of the Hapsburg Empire where Italians, Slavs, and Austrians met to do business. Trieste's cosmopolitan character kept it from being dominated by any one religion. The city is pleasant visually, but was too commercial ever to become a center for art or architecture. Morris argues, in essence, that Trieste is a good place but not a great one: the food is excellent but not ethnically distinct, and the people themselves are gravely courteous, but undistinguished. Trieste is almost nationless, thus its appeal to exiles like Morris, who has traveled the world in search of an identity. It is always necessary to say of Morris that she used to be, before her sex change in 1972, the distinguished British author, James Morris, father of four. He did not cease to be a father when he became a woman, but with all the noise about sexual identity in the late 20th century it is gratifying to hear a mature, no longer embattled voice coming to terms. Life has been good to Morris, but inescapably melancholy, like the city she identifies with. Trieste is dreamlike, Kafkaesque, and maybe it is nowhere. Even so, Morris does not slight its history: the aforementioned Hapsburgs; conquering armies, whether British or German; and most remarkably, the sojourn of Trieste's quintessential exile, James Joyce. Joyce produced most of his work in Trieste, and Morris delights in tracing his impoverished, not altogether admirable, history. A disciplined, unsentimental last testament from an old pro, full of distilled adventures and the reflective richness that distinguishes the melancholy from the merely sad. (Kirkus Reviews)

Waterstones Books Quarterly, September 2001
She ends her distinguished career with another triumph... a unique and highly personal meditation on Trieste as a city that haunts the memory.

Customer Reviews

A Beautiful Ending...
Trieste is a city I knew nothing about, but always had a vague impression of. That impression, of faded grandeur, old-Europe cosmopolitanism gone to seed, and melancholy, is largely confirmed in this, the first of Morris' books I've read. The fishing village at the top of the Adriatic was a sleepy burg until the Austro-Hungarian empire transformed it into it's only seaport and HQ for its imperial navy in the early 1700s. It rapidly became one of the leading seaports of the world, and an international center of commerce. Following the defeat and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Trieste was handed over to Italy, which already had plenty of ports, and thus it quickly reverted to sleepy backwater. Over the last century it was occupied by the Nazis, Allied forces, was a UN free territory, and eventually reverted to Italian rule. Nowadays, as Morris writes, "It offers no unforgettable landmark, no universally familiar melody, no unmistakable cuisine, hardly a single native name that anyone knows."

And while Morris ably rambles through the city's history (which she first visited in 1946), the book is a bit of a metaphor for human aging and memory. She has vowed this is her final book in a prolific career, and the melancholy tone echoes the melancholy of a city whose glory days lie a century in the past. She writes, "Trieste makes one ask sad questions of oneself. What am I here for? Where am I going?" That's not to say the book is depressing or sad, because her love for the city is evident throughout, as she grapples with its place in her own psyche. While she clearly enjoys recreating in her mind's eye the hustle and bustle of the imperial era, she also finds, "For me, Trieste is an allegory of limbo, in the secular sense of an indefinable hiatus." So while the narrative is studded snippets of history, amusing and telling anecdotes from her own visits, and evocations of past residents such as Richard Burton and James Joyce, it's also rich in introspection. Above all, Morris' meandering prose is beautiful and has inspired me to delve into her past work. I do wish the publishers had included a few historical maps, some photos, and a bibliography of other works on Trieste.

A beautifully written book
As an Englishman living in self-imposed exile in Trieste, I find that Jan Morris eloquently expresses the unique atmosphere of this unusual, beautiful and all-but forgotten city, along with the strange spell it casts on anyone possessing a sensitive and inquisitive nature. Much more than a travel guide, the book prompts the reader to reflect on many aspects of life, just as the city itself does to those that visit it. A haunting book about a haunting city.

A masterpiece of travel writing
Trieste is an amazing city - the sort of place the haunts the memory ofr years after you visit. In Italy, but not really Italian - a real mix of cultures and influences.

Jan Morris seems to have captured the spirit of this remarkable city so clearly - whilst writing some of the most eloquent, beautifully-written prose that I've come across in a non-fiction book for very, very many years.

Memorable and wonderful.