Off the Road

Read Off the Road Storyline:

‘There are
already far too many books about the pilgrimage to Santiago, but Jack Hitt’s is
different, and indispensable. It is funny, shrewd, honest and wise. Whether you
have walked the Camino, or are thinking of doing so, or are just curious about
why other people do it, this is the book.’

- David
Lodge

 

‘The story
of Hitt’s pilgrimage as it evolves from a solitary meditative adventure into
the sack of Santiago de Compostela by a wine-sodden army of shaggy blistered
tourists is quite brilliantly told. Hitt plots the downward curve of his book’s
narrative arc with the control and precision of a good novelist, and he has a
remarkable gift for being deadly serious and very funny all in the same breath.
His point of view in this book is unusually complex and self-aware; it has many
shades and tones, ranging from earnest inquiry to waspish mockery (much of the
satire in Off the Road is directed, refreshingly, at the narrator
himself), but one never loses the sense that this is one voice. Travelling with
him as a reader, I found him a fascinating companion — always intelligent,
disconcertingly observant, satisfyingly hard to second-guess....

‘I do hope
the book enjoys the success it deserves. It came to me out of the blue. I don’t
know the author. But it strikes me as a glistening original in the shopworn and
cliche-infected world of the modern travel book.’

- Jonathan
Raban



ISBN 1-85410-306-7

 



 this
irreverent
and ruminative adventure, Jack Hitt sets out to walk the 500 miles
along the pilgrim’s route from France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
He had just reached the Dantean age of thirty-five. What better way to
serve out his coming
mid-life crisis than on a pilgrimage? After all, in its simplest form, a
pilgrimage was nothing more than a long walk; ‘stripped down, a pilgrim
was a
guy out for some cosmically serious fresh air’. Little did he know.

Off the
Road
charts the serendipitous encounters of an innocent abroad, as Jack Hitt
undergoes the rigorous traditions of Europe’s oldest form of packaged tour. The
result is a comic yet sympathetic attempt to understand the vanishing role of
religion in modern life.

Following
in the footsteps of millions of medieval pilgrims, this is an unforgettable
tour of the sites that people believe God once touched: the strange fortress
said to hold the Holy Grail; the miraculous chickens whose descendants still
dance in the church of Santo Domingo; the places associated with the murderous
monks known as the Knights Templar; and the churches filled with relics such as
chunks of bread left over from the Last Supper.

Along the
way, in small-town shelters or lost among Spanish mountains, our hero finds
himself bunking down with countless pilgrims — a Flemish film crew, a drunken
gypsy, a draconian Dutch air force officer, a one-legged walker, and a Welsh
family with a mule. Pilgrims don’t constitute a school of thought but a
condition.

 

Allegiances
and acquaintances come and go; friendships are made and broken, all in the
course of a day or a casual remark. Exhausted travellers meet for a lively talk
about what they know best — basic human suffering generally, blisters
specifically.

Off the
Road
rediscovers the warm hilarity that underlies the solemn rituals of the past. In
the day-to-day grind of walking under the hot Spanish sun, Jack Hitt and his
smelly companions not only find occasional good meals or dry shelter, but also
stumble upon some fresh ideas about old-time zealotry and modern belief. Anyone
disturbed by the sense of a disposable past will relish the way this offbeat
journey through history turns into a provocative rethinking of the present.

Jack Hitt is a contributing editor at Harper's
Magazine and Lingua Franca. He writes regularly for The New York
Times Sunday Magazine. He is from Charleston, South Carolina.

Jacket
design and illustration by Mary Lynn Blasutta

 



 

Aurum Press Ltd

25 Bedford Avenue

London WC1B 3 AT

 

ISBN 1 85410
306 7

£14.95