In The Land Of Alexander [Paperback]

Keith Hale (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1990

In the summer of 1989, Keith Hale set out to discover the gay life and culture of Eastern Europe and Turkey, a region not known for its gay movement.  This unusual travelogue combines historical and cultural insights with first-hand experiences.  Just as Edmund White, in States of Desire, found each city in the U.S. to have a distinct personality, Hale finds each of the countries he visited to have a unique appeal for the gay traveler.  His book is of special interest given the dramatic changes that occurred in the Balkans soon after his visit.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Keith Hale is the author of four books including the popular novel, Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada. Hale succeeded where many had failed when he convinced the Rupert Brooke Trust to allow him to edit a collection of the poet's letters that had been sealed for eighty years due to their homosexual themes. That edition, Friends & Apostles, was published by Yale University Press. Hale also published a groundbreaking account of gay life in the Balkans--before the walls of Communism crumbled--in his travelogue titled In the Land of Alexander. The fourth book, Torn Allegiances, dealt with gays in the military. Hale has published essays on Dickens, Rumi, Sa'di, Hafiz, David Garnett, and Philippine literature. He lives in Wisconsin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books; 1st edition (August 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555831680
• ISBN-13: 978-1555831684
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,096,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As Marc Bolan once sang, "Book after book, I get hooked every time the writer talks to me like a friend." I love books with beautiful tenderness--the works of Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Hal Phillips, Hermann Hesse, Bienvenido Santos, and Willa Cather, for example. I also greatly appreciate the growing number of authors writing gay and lesbian lit for young adults. I teach a course with that title. If you read anything brilliant, let me know. Contact: http://www.facebook.com/watersgreenhouse

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Impressive Tour, June 13, 2005

By 

C. H. Backus (Quilcene, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In The Land Of Alexander (Paperback)

This is a fascinating and most curious work, a kind of time-capsule for the study of the period. It is a journal-like report of Hale's travels in 1989 taking him from Vienna to Hungary, south through Yugoslavia, into Greece and then Turkey, and then back to Greece. I read it with great interest as I lived in this part of the world for about 5 years. It was a pleasure to see it again from the eyes of another. But at the same time, we realize that a lot of what he saw and recorded is now no longer; with the collapse of the Soviet system and the renewed independence of the Balkans and Turkey it has all changed. In the 1980's, for example, it was often not easy to cash a traveler's check; now credit cards abound both here and in Greece. So the book has an added attraction as a reminder of where they all were in 1989 and how far they have come.

And in addition, Hale has done his homework and checked the sources so provides a helpful bibliography. He has, I thought curiously, an unusually long section on Rupert Brooke, the Engish poet who died en route to Gallipoli. I later learned that this preceded further scholarly work Hale did in preparing for the publishing of a long-neglected correspondance between Brooke and

J. Strachey. The only caveat I might mention, and it is not a major one, is Hale's seeming hostility to Christianity (at least the Greek Orthodox expression); at one point he calls a religious ceremony "silly" but does not tell us why he felt that. And his editor should blush allowing the rash statement that Hippocrates the famous ancient physician, lived 25,000 years ago (p. 237)! Surely not! But these small points aside, it is a delightful piece of work and a glimpse at a past era so near us.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unique, November 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In The Land Of Alexander (Paperback)

I've never seen a travel book quite like this one. I enjoyed the adventures and the writer's voice.