Full Circle: One Man's Journey by Air, Train, Boat and Occasionally Very Sore Feet Around the 20.000 Miles of the Pacific Rim - Hardcover

Palin, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312169604 ISBN 13: 9780312169602

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1997

Synopsis

Full Circle could be subtitled Palin's Book of Wonders. As he and his television crew undertake what may be the first-ever circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim, they prove that there is an awful lot of the world Palin hasn't seen. In this, the third and most ambitious of Michael Palin's adventures, he travels for almost a year through the eighteen countries that border the world's largest ocean.

Volcanoes mark Palin's journey like stepping stones. He climbs one which has freshly erupted and is still smoking. He is forced to negotiate mountains and plunging gorges, cross glaciers and dodge icebergs. He follows great rivers like the Yangtze and the Amazon to some of the most remote places on earth, and he confronts the notorious Cape Horn and the windswept beaches of western Alaska.

The people Palin meets provide a constant supply of surprises, pleasures and lessons in life. He visits a Gulag camp in Siberia with one of its few remaining survivors, talks to head-hunters in Borneo, eats maggots in Mexico and rustles camels in the deserts of Australia. He's stood up on a date in Adelaide, taken short on the banks of the Amazon, allowed to land a plane at Seattle and sing with the Pacific Fleet choir in Vladivostok.

Full Circle is the record of a journey of several lifetimes and of the often colourful, sometimes disgusting, frequently hair-raising, once or twice hysterical but almost always beautiful world that stretches around the Pacific Ocean.

About this title

Review

Michael Palin has certainly been busy since his days with Monty Python's Flying Circus. In Full Circle, Palin and a film crew go on a year-long adventure visiting 18 countries along the Pacific Rim. The film was eventually made into a 10-part PBS series, to which this book serves as a companion. Not for nothing is this part of the world called the "Ring of Fire"; volcanoes punctuate the landscape, and Palin even climbs one still smoking from a recent eruption. But the difficult landscape is only one challenge in this at times hair-raising, at times hilarious, always fascinating journey around the world's largest ocean. In the Philippines, Palin witnesses "psychic surgery": on the Urubamba River, Palin simultaneously clings for his life to a dugout canoe as he shoots the rapids and keeps up with England's progress in the World Cup via shortwave radio.

Whether he's visiting a Gulag camp in Siberia or chowing down on maggots in Mexico, Palin meets the challenges of rough travel with grace, courage, and more than a little humor. Full Circle is fun to read, includes many color photographs from Palin's adventures, and makes a terrific addition to the armchair traveler's bookshelf.

About the Author

Michael Palin established his reputation with MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS and RIPPING YARNS. His work also includes several films with Monty Python, as well as THE MISSIONARY, A PRIVATE FUNCTION, an award-winning performance as the hapless Ken in A FISH CALLED WANDA and, more recently, AMERICAN FRIENDS and FIERCE CREATURES. His television credits include two films for the BBC's GREAT RAILWAY JOURNEYS, the plays EAST OF IPSWICH and NUMBER 27, and Alan Bleasdale's GBH. He has written books to accompany his six very successful travel series, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, POLE TO POLE, FULL CIRCLE, HEMINGWAY ADVENTURE, SAHARA and HIMALAYA. He is also the author of a number of children's stories, the play THE WEEKEND and the novel HEMINGWAY'S CHAIR.Visit the website for more information www.palinstravels.co.uk

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0312169604
• ISBN 13: 9780312169602
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320