Nicolas Bouvier





Nicolas Bouvier

Author profile


born
in Grand-Lancy, Switzerland
March 06, 1929

died
February 17, 1998

gender
male

genre


About this author

Nicolas Bouvier (1929-1998) was a Swiss writer and photographer.

His travels all over the world incited him to recount his experiences and adventures. His work is marked by a commitment to report what he sees and feels, shorn of any pretence of omniscience, leading often to an intimacy bordering on the mystical. His journey from Geneva to Japan was in many ways prescient of the great eastward wave of hippies that occurred in the sixties and seventies - slow, meandering progress in a small, iconic car, carefully guarded idiosyncrasy, a rite of passage. Yet, it differs in that the travelogues this journey inspired contain deep reflections on man's intimate nature, written in a style very much aware and appreciative of the traditions and possib...more


Average rating: 4.15 · 1,564 ratings · 107 reviews · 43 distinct works · Similar authors
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More books by Nicolas Bouvier…
“Traveling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you - or unmaking you.”
Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus.”
Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“In the end, the bedrock of existence is not made up of the family, or work, or what others say or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts could not stand more.”
Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

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