At last, traveling with Herodotus

The first time I heard of Herodotus was in the movie The English Patient. I loved - loved - how Almasy kept his personal journal by writing within his copy of The Histories. He layered his thoughts over those of Herodotus, putting in drawings, overfilling the pages. The Greek and the wars he wrote about were a part of the movie through Almasy's copy of the book and I was beyond curious about it back then and also couldn't figure out why I had never heard of him before then.

But then I remembered that the only world history class I had was in junior high - eight grade maybe? It was utterly and completely forgettable - I recall the teacher and that my friend Caryn was in the class with me. Other than that, it's a total loss.

So, for my birthday last year one of the books I asked for was Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski and I just finished it last week. Not only do I have a firm grip on who Herodotus was now, but this was also the first Kapuscinski book I've read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The whole notion of being the only foreign correspondent for your newspaper - pretty much the only one from your county - blows me away. In every way that matters, Kapuscinski was just like Herodotus, going out to the edges of the map, finding a world that he barely knew existed. (His chapters on Africa, where the maps are barely drawn especially illustrates this point.)

What really impressed me though was the relationship Kapuscinski formed with The Histories. Every place he visits sparks a literary memory and he views the people and places through the history shared in the book. When he writes about his work, he writes about Herodotus and this is how I ended up, at least a little bit, learning the history I was never taught.

Now, if I can get brave enough, I should tackle The Histories itself.

[Post pic is from The English Patient - Almasy's journal/The Histories.]