Hav

Praise

“Roaming a city of dreams.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post, List of 66 Favorite Books

“After reading Last Letters from Hav, what travel writer would ever want to report from an actual place? . . . a vigorous literary hybrid; elegant fiction in its own right but also a respectfully witty homage to indomitable English travel writers like Lawrence, Burton and Blanch.”
—Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times

“A touching love-letter, not to an Invisible City but to life itself. Morris has penned a fable about an imaginary abroad to teach us about the here and now.”
—Peter J. Conradi, The Independent

“Jan Morris has marshaled reportorial insight and literary
flair to describe nearly every interesting place on the planet. Unique among them is Hav, which she revisits in her latest, perhaps most insightful book yet.”
—Donald Morrison, Time

“Taken for the real thing on its first publication in 1985, this faux-travel memoir prompted fruitless calls to confused travel agents. It’s no wonder: Morris’s imagination is a marvel, her spectral country fully realized and fascinating. Hav, an eastern Mediterranean peninsula, rises believably in the mind, with its city skyline of onion domes, minarets, and one incongruous pagoda along with its glorious and complex history. Hav’s past is ingeniously, believably intertwined with real events; its present is realistically faded and isolated, adding to the eerie feeling one gets of spying on a lost world.” — Publishers Weekly

“The city’s full story — insofar as the full story will ever be known — can be found in this handsome paperback. Still, most readers are likely to prefer “Last Letters From Hav,” that beautifully written, nostalgic excursion to the final station stop on the Mediterranean Express, the Hav where Eric Ambler might have set one of his atmospheric spy thrillers of the 1930s or where a doddering Ruritanian prince might try to cadge a glass of champagne. That romantic down-at-heel city no longer exists, if it ever really did. Alas, the Holy Myrmidonic Republic — under various names — is all too real.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post