About the Author

ALAN BOOTH was born in London in 1946 and traveled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theater. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his untimely death from stomach cancer in 1993. His highly praised Looking for the Lost is also available from Kodansha Globe.

Reviews

A marvelous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public image.--Washington Post Book World

An illuminating book.--The Economist
Alan Booth has given us a memorable, oddly beautiful book.--Asian Wall Street Journal
Fluent in the language, well-informed and disabused, [Booth] is in the fine tradition of hard-to-please travelers like Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and V.S. Naipaul. A sharp eye and a good memory for detail...give an astonishing immediacy to his account.--Frank Tuohy, Times Literary Supplement
Alan Booth was not only the best travel writer on Japan, but one of the best travel writers in the English language.--Ian Buruma, author of The Wages of Guilt
[Booth] achieved an extraordinary understanding of life as it is lived by ordinary Japanese....Frequently brilliant in his insights.--F.G. Notehelfer, The New York Times Book Review
One of the best foreign observers of Japan today...his book is unsurpassed.--Far Eastern Economic Review
To Travel with Alan Booth is to travel in very civilized company indeed, but also close to the ground. He has a mind that illuminates and enlivens everything it encounters.--Nigel Barley, author of The Innocent Anthropologist
Booth's capacity for rueful, discerning observation will keep him in the front ranks of travel writers for years to come.--Kirkus