![]() ![]() 113)Īt the outset, Hans is not much impressed by his dingy lodgings and plans to leave the next day. Do you mean to tell me you don’t wear a watch? The fact is, I don’t see any point in watches, said Hans, they never give me the time I want. ![]() What time is it? What! said Alvaro astonished. Journeys merely take a little longer, and that seems to be all right because there’s a timeless quality to Hans’s sojourn even though the seasons move on. Every venture outdoors involves getting lost, and yet no one – the reader least of all – seems disoriented by it. There’s a Kafkaesque quality to the novel: the city itself has no fixed topography and its streets and buildings move. At nearly 600 pages it’s a long novel, but from the outset the reader is captivated by two imperatives: will Hans win his lady-love away from the richest man in town? And will Hans the inveterate traveller become entrapped in Wandernburg, just like everybody else? Traveller of the Century, of all the books shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, is the most seductive. ![]()
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