Product Description

"Hav" gives us Jan Morris at her most delightful and most suggestive. The city is a magical place - yet behind its arcane splendours are darker implications. The traditional Roof Race is peculiarly exciting, the waterfront is picturesque, the wistful call of a trumpeter from a distant rampart is wonderfully evocative, and every street corner is haunted by memories of illustrious visitors - Freud, Diaghilev, Marco Polo, Lawrence of Arabia and countless others. But Morris's visit ends in flight when an unidentified enemy arrives to seize control. When Jan Morris returns to Hav, some twenty years later, she finds that her account of her earlier visit is banned - and discovers a place that has rebuilt itself, transformed by a new energy and now dominated by a totemic tower 2000 feet tall. But as the old Hav was in many ways an allegory of the last century, so the city in its new incarnation offers no less elusive hints, echoes and portents of our 21st century world. As a destination, it remains as entertaining as ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463534 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 301 pages

Review
"When the world's foremost travel writer describes the small city-state of Hav, it is unlike any of her other books. For Hav exists only in one special place - Jan Morris's imagination. 'Wherever Morris goes she brings a sharp, impassioned yet subtle eye and an inexhaustible love of adventure... there are few better ways to see the world than in her company'. Ann Wroe, Daily Telegraph"

Christina Koning, The Times, June 9, 2007
'It is a testament to Morris's skill and charm that one stays
convinced for so long.'

Sunday Times, July 8, 2007
'Morris evokes Hav in such vivid and atmospheric prose, littered
with historical and geographical detail.'

Customer Reviews

Wonderful combination of fiction and travel narrative
A travel book about a fictional city-state: what a fabulous conceit. Jan Morris handles it well, filling the book with details of the city -- its odd mishmash of cultural influences, its people, its architecture -- that made me wish I could visit. The pretense at many famous figures' involvement with Hav adds to the entertainment. And then the tragic changes, a city becoming more uniform and false, tourists remaining on one glitzy island away from the remains of the real city. I mourned for the destroyed Arab buildings and Chinese tower, though it pleased me to know that other people fear homogeneity. Overall, Hav is a fascinating book and well worth a read: a marvellous combination of fiction and travel narrative.