La Vie Errante by Guy de Maupassant (1890)

Published two years before Maupassant died, this feels, in some senses, like a posthumous piece. The editing is a little odd, allowing him to repeat strong impressions and colourings in a couple of places only a few paragraphs after they were first employed, almost like the editors were suffering, by that stage, from Great Author Syndrome, and wouldn't gainsay him. It is a much more beautiful and satisfying piece than its companion, Au Soleil. After a niggly first chapter which bodes badly, complaining narkily about the Eiffel Tower, we are taken on a tour of the western Mediterranean by boat. The most gorgeous of these impressions is that of Sicily, which is rampant with colour, exoticism and poetic breadth, taking in its vulcanism and history fundamentally. Then there is an extended land tour of Algiers and, most importantly, Tunisia, where he explores profoundly the richness of the place from a European-eye view. He is fascinated by Islam and its adherents, and critical of them too in some senses - very much a colonial attitude underpinned with a strong sense of intrigue and mesmerizedness-with-the-alien. His descriptions of the landscape are powerfully evocative; swamps, mires, white towns, terrains of cactus-growth and rock, ancient ruins, decorations of mosques, religious compounds and private houses, mirages, mists, the huge variety of the colourings and moods and wear of the people themselves. One of the examples of the author's work where his ability with fluid verbal decoration and addiction to his version of truthfulness are allowed full sway without being drowned out in snarkish attitude and over-simplified concentration on the negative. Quite quietly stirring.