A Barbarian in Asia

“It is superb in its swift illuminations and its wit... [Michaux has] a way of leading you to the unpredictable margins of his sensibility, as when he notes, apropos of the generality of psychic gifts in India, that it makes the distinction between imbeciles and non-imbeciles ' so unsatisfactory'....” —Alfred Kazin, New Yorker

Henri Michaux (1889-1984), the great French poet and painter, set out as a young man to see the Far East. His strange insights and ironic impressions comprise A Barbarian in Asia, presented here in its original version in the classic translation by Sylvia Beach, the famous Paris bookseller.