Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Publisher and industry reviews

UK Kirkus review

Bookshops will, one hopes, order many copies of Trieste. Not simply because it's a beautiful meditation on a suggestive subject; but because it's two kinds of book, and belongs on two different shelves. Primarily it is a travelogue. But, at a deeper level, it's autobiography. This small 'free port', 'open city', and 'home of exiles' on the Adriatic is an image for the author herself. Himself, as James Morris was, when he first went there, as a British officer, in 1946 (true to its history, there was a tug-of-war as to which side of the Iron Curtain Trieste would fall after World War II). As Morris says in her epilogue: 'Much of this little book has been self-description. For years I felt myself an exile from normality.' For those coming to Morris for the first time, the book is prefaced by 'A Necessary Explanation': 'Jan Morris lived and wrote as James Morris until she completed a change of sexual role in 1972.' In other words, 'Trieste, c'est moi'. Exile can be stimulating but is always unhappy. The name Trieste carries with it an accidental association with 'tristesse'. As Morris puts it: 'Aristotle, I have been told, believed that every interesting man possessed a streak of melancholy. I feel the same about cities. Melancholy is Trieste's chief rapture.' Bonjour Trieste. As a travel book, Trieste is entertaining - primarily for the fascinating vagrants who have, usually in transit, called it home. Two great writers dominate: James Joyce and Italo Svevo. There are lesser glories. I did not know, for example, that Sigmund Freud spent time there, doing research on the sexual propensities of eels. As Morris observes, the young women of Vienna turned out to be richer territory. Review by John Sutherland (Kirkus UK)

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