Voyage Around My Room

by Xavier de Maistre, Kristen Hall-Geisler (Translator)

Overview

A lively and utterly singular travelogue of the intricate curiosities that are directly within one’s own reach

In 1790, while serving in the Piedmontese army, the French aristocrat Xavier de Maistre (1763–1852) was punished for dueling and placed under house arrest for forty-two days. The result was a discursive, mischievous memoir Voyage Around My Room, and its sequel, Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room. Admired by Nietzsche and Machado de Assis, Ossian and Susan Sontag, this classic book proves that sitting on the living-room sofa can be as fascinating as crossing the Alps or paddling up the Amazon.

In addition to the Voyage and Expedition, this edition also includes the dialogue “The Leper of the City of Aosta,” a preface by Xavier’s better-known older brother (the royalist philosopher Joseph de Maistre), and an introduction by Richard Howard.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732060357
Publisher:	Practical Fox
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Pages:	116
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Kristen Hall-Geisler is a freelance writer, book editor, literary translator, and indie publisher. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, How Stuff Works, and more. She lives in Oregon and works out of a fancy shed in her backyard.

What People are Saying About This

Susan Sontag

"The late 18th-century is when Modernite (more exactly the modernities) began. Sterne, Diderot, Rousseau...among the effortlessly brilliant writers of that incandescent era, there still remains Xavier DeMaistre to discover or rediscover. His masterpiece 'Voyage Around My Room', one of the most original and mettlesom autobiographical narratives ever written."

Editorial Reviews

"Funny and deceptively profound."

The Guardian

"The late eighteenth century is when modernity (more exactly, the modernities) began. Sterne, Diderot, Rousseau—among the effortlessly brilliant writers of that incandescent era, there still remains Xavier de Maistre to discover or rediscover. His masterpiece, Voyage Around My Room, is one of the most original and mettlesome autobiographical narratives ever written."

Susan Sontag

"De Maistre pioneered a mode of travel that was to make his name: room travel. Dressed in pink-and-blue pajamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen."

Alain De Botton