Bøker av Garrett Rittenberg

An essay and a letter to a friend make up this short collection of travel by Garrett Rittenberg. A return-journey to India gives the opportunity to reflect on the changes on the sub-continent, while a literary pilgrimage to the city of Harar in eastern-Ethiopia provides a window into a part of the world few have seen. The Other Side of Beauty discusses cultures seemingly at odds with life in the west and the impact they can have on the western mind. The time spent in such places affords the opportunity to understand that beauty often exists in unconventional forms. Things once considered repulsive and absurd are made beautiful in the mind of a traveler willing to understand. The reader is shown the power of experiencing distant cultures through the reflections of a traveler who was fortunate enough to see them for himself.

Garrett Rittenberg set out for Italy to satisfy a long held desire to experience and become intimately acquainted with the country, its culture and its people. By diligently keeping this diary he fulfilled an ambition to write about the country using Italy as a kind of paintbrush and canvas to describe the daily scenes he encountered. He believes that almost everything about Italy is worth mentioning, and his unique observations and rich descriptions of daily life, masterful works of art, architecture, landscapes, and Italians themselves provide a unique view into the life of the country. He deals with sudden bouts of loneliness, struggles with the difficulties and peculiarities of traveling in some parts of the country, yet is more often ecstatic from coming into contact with so many beautiful churches, works of art, graceful people, and delicious food. At the end of the journey, his opinion of Italy is only heightened, and he feels nostalgic before the journey is over.

South American Scenes is the story of a four month journey that illuminates not only the joys and difficulties of travel, but the rich histories and current affairs of the continent. From Sao Paolo down to Punta Arenas and back up to Cusco with an interlude on Easter Island, this is an in depth look at a continent through the eyes of a traveler motivated by the excitement and liberty of the open road combined with the desire to make a journey last beyond its completion. Rittenberg' s account of his travels in South America makes use of his first hand experiences as a springboard into the culture and history of the continent.He is eager to relate the present to the past and find something of the past that one would not necessarily assume relates to the present in the hope of bringing clarity to a place once foreign to him. He writes in a vivid style not only with the aim of enabling the reader to see what he has seen but in order to make them feel they are also on a jour­ney discovering new cultures and other states of mind.Along the way he encounters preachers, protestors, glaciers, the spirit of poets, the ruins of an empire, the relics of a civili­zation, an ever changing land­scape and an abundance of soli­tude that enables him to come home with a clear picture of a continent that for so long had fueled his curiosity.