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.Naples '44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth

by: Norman Lewis

July 31, 2002
Norman Lewis's son is a friend of mine and has been for twenty years. For twenty years I've drunk beer, watched football, told jokes and (in the dim & distant past) chased girls with the son. I even met the father once. It was not until I read the back of a Norman Lewis book last year & saw the picture, that I put two and two together. "Yep, that's my Dad". Astonishing!

I read that book,A Dragon Apparent, and enjoyed it, but not really enough to run out & buy others. I dont read much travel writing in general but it was undeniably well written, interesting & felt it was doing me good. On a whim I bought this one, Naples 44, last week and it is a real step up. Dressed up as a diary of a place in time (there's a clue ... Read More:
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.The Honoured Society: The Sicilian Mafia Observed

by: Norman Lewis

August 29, 2003
This is actually one of the books on the Mafia you SHOULD get. The main strong point being it's ability to explain the background of the mafia. It's also well written, this is good "story telling".

If you get this you should complement it with "Excellent Cadavers" by Alexander Stille. Together they give you enough information to navigate further. Both of them deal with the Sicilian mafia, but concentrate on different periods.
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.Voices of the Old Sea

by: Norman Lewis

January 12, 1996
The UK edition is a miserable production. For much the same price get the US edition published by Carroll & Graf through Amazon 'used and new' list, or Abebooks. It has a larger format with proper margins on nice paper and opens properly, but type only slightly bigger and still rather squidgy.
How fictional is the book? Reviews talk about Farol and Sort as if they're real places, but I can't find them. Does anybody know?
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Used Price: £3.23

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.A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam

by: Norman Lewis

August 29, 2003
The UK edition is a miserable production. For much the same price get the US edition published by Carroll & Graf through Amazon 'used and new' list, or Abebooks. It has a larger format with proper margins on nice paper and opens properly, but type only slightly bigger and still rather squidgy.
How fictional is the book? Reviews talk about Farol and Sort as if they're real places, but I can't find them. Does anybody know?
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Used Price: £7.39

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.In Sicily

by: Norman Lewis

September 07, 2001
This is a short book - 166 pages - and every page is a gem. Nearly every paragraph and certainly all chapters could be read on their own - they make sense, they read beautifully and, more often than not they are very funny. I read Naples'44 years ago and by accident picked up this book and straightaway remembered how brilliantly Lewis writes. I shall now go onto his other books having been a complete idiot not to do so earlier.
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.I Came, I Saw: An Autobiography

by: Norman Lewis

December 06, 1996
This is a wonderful book. Norman Lewis had a most remarkable and peculiar childhood and early adulthood. He was sent from proto-suburban pre-war Enfield to live with his grandfather and three aunts in Carmarthen, 'Welsh Wales'. All three aunts were a bit touched and hilariously funny descriptions by Lewis lighten what were in fact very sad, strange and pitiful lives. He captures the stultifying pettiness and conformity of deeply provincial lives with unsentimental clarity and insight.

Back in Enfield, his father, a very reluctant pharmacist, gave up his day-job to become a medium, he and Lewis's mother having embraced Spiritualism. Again. Lewis writes with laugh-out-loud humour about scenes and events that at bottom were really rather pathetic ... Read More:
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.Word Power Made Easy

by: Norman Lewis

August 01, 1994
This is a wonderful book. Norman Lewis had a most remarkable and peculiar childhood and early adulthood. He was sent from proto-suburban pre-war Enfield to live with his grandfather and three aunts in Carmarthen, 'Welsh Wales'. All three aunts were a bit touched and hilariously funny descriptions by Lewis lighten what were in fact very sad, strange and pitiful lives. He captures the stultifying pettiness and conformity of deeply provincial lives with unsentimental clarity and insight.

Back in Enfield, his father, a very reluctant pharmacist, gave up his day-job to become a medium, he and Lewis's mother having embraced Spiritualism. Again. Lewis writes with laugh-out-loud humour about scenes and events that at bottom were really rather pathetic ... Read More:
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.A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India (Picador Books)

by: Norman Lewis

January 10, 1992
This is a wonderful book. Norman Lewis had a most remarkable and peculiar childhood and early adulthood. He was sent from proto-suburban pre-war Enfield to live with his grandfather and three aunts in Carmarthen, 'Welsh Wales'. All three aunts were a bit touched and hilariously funny descriptions by Lewis lighten what were in fact very sad, strange and pitiful lives. He captures the stultifying pettiness and conformity of deeply provincial lives with unsentimental clarity and insight.

Back in Enfield, his father, a very reluctant pharmacist, gave up his day-job to become a medium, he and Lewis's mother having embraced Spiritualism. Again. Lewis writes with laugh-out-loud humour about scenes and events that at bottom were really rather pathetic ... Read More:
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.The World, The World

by: Norman Lewis

June 06, 1997
Lewis begins this volume with a description of a chance encounter in the elegant dining car of a train in pre-war Italy, which would lead to a friendship spanning decades.

This familiar Lewis combination of a world now disappeared and the importance of genuine friendships, all described in his economic but intensly lyrical style make for a book that is truly engrossing.

Despite a lifetime of describing events and people from across the world, Lewis avoids both cynicism (except when dealing with authoritarians) or wide eyed wonder. His encounters with profound brutalities in Guatemala or Indo China are described with as much care for the details as are the idiosyncracies of his housekeeper or for that matter those of Jonathon Cape and any ... Read More:
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.The Tomb in Seville

by: Norman Lewis

November 05, 2004
Lewis begins this volume with a description of a chance encounter in the elegant dining car of a train in pre-war Italy, which would lead to a friendship spanning decades.

This familiar Lewis combination of a world now disappeared and the importance of genuine friendships, all described in his economic but intensly lyrical style make for a book that is truly engrossing.

Despite a lifetime of describing events and people from across the world, Lewis avoids both cynicism (except when dealing with authoritarians) or wide eyed wonder. His encounters with profound brutalities in Guatemala or Indo China are described with as much care for the details as are the idiosyncracies of his housekeeper or for that matter those of Jonathon Cape and any ... Read More:
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Used Price: £3.30