The Kindness of Strangers

Tom Lutz, a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, enjoys traveling and visiting foreign lands while staying at local inns and sampling the market cuisine. He has touched down in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, New Zealand, Nepal, Micronesia, Ethiopia and rambled on to other destinations on different continents. His descriptions of his meeting locals and impressions of these areas read like his recounted memories jotted in a journal each evening. His sojourns were brief, and the reader mainly learns about his impressions and conversations held with the local guides or other tourists that he chanced to meet. He bluntly questions the natives about the status of their government and how they manage to subsist. I was disappointed not to learn more about the cultures and natural attractions featured at each site. Each chapter has a black and white illustration of an attractive native, but no pictures depicting the scenery of these exotic-sounding locales. The title of this book is misleading as his contact with the natives is superficial, yet he delightedly recounts episodes of knife threats, stalking, and dishonest encounters with the locals. More aptly, the book’s description should be ‘Quick Stops Around the World using Bargain Air-Flights’.