Land of Blood and Honey

From north to south, from winter to spring, renowned travel writer Liu Zichao embarks on another journey, leading us through the Balkan Peninsula, a land flowing with blood and honey. Across 8 countries and 23 towns—Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia, and Greece—he once again witnesses the fragmented yet vast expanse of the other side of the world. This is a travelogue of wandering, yet it tells stories of people searching for home. The ghosts of history loom over this Southern European peninsula, as queer individuals and poets, refugees and drug dealers, murderers and victims, believers and merchants all make an appearance. In Slovenia, he stumbles into a poetry salon, witnessing poets' efforts to rebuild their homeland with words in a country so small it's easy to overlook. In a border town in Croatia, he sees the afterglow of a bygone empire, discovering past elegance in an old waiter. In Montenegro, he meets a woman who works as a call-taker for an American pizza chain, surprised by Americans' appetites but unable to taste the pizza herself. He encounters the godfather of e-commerce in Serbia, who embraces the tide of commercialization, seeing a world that is smooth and without resistance. He meets a generation that grew up during the Greek economic crisis, shouting leftist slogans and proudly declaring, "We are also a Balkan country." The Balkans become more than just a geographical concept; it's like an adjective, fraught with complex meanings of pain, struggle, exploration, and hope. Traversing the long shadow of history, arriving at scenes marked by bullet holes, and collecting the bloody tales of wanderers along the way, he explores a more universal question, one that begins in the Balkans but resonates with each of us: in these uncertain times, where do we find home? Liu Zichao graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University and previously worked for "Southern People Weekly" and "GQ China." His published works include "Arriving Before Midnight," "Following the Monsoon," and "Lost Satellites." He has also translated "The City of Marvels," "A Moveable Feast," and "The Long Goodbye." In 2019, his long-form non-fiction work on Central Asia was awarded the "Global True Story Award" Special Recognition; in 2021, he was named "One-Way Street Bookstore Literary Award - Annual Young Writer."

2024-10-01

文匯出版社

New Classic Culture

390

9787549643295