World of Worlds

At the age of 23 RICHARD SCOTT SACKS, author of WORLD OF WORLDS: Stories From Four Continents, bought a leaky dugout canoe and with a friend paddled 300 kilometers down the Congo River to the rapids above Kisangani.

WORLD OF WORLDS is political and historical fiction from the front lines: Vietnam-era historical fiction, post-colonial Africa travel stories, character-driven political thrillers, and coming-of-age adventure tales.

It’s an unusually evocative and immersive work based on lived experience.

Anyone who has traveled the world's back roads — foreigners abroad, children of expats, tourists, students of post-independence Africa, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australians — will recognize the authenticity immediately.

These 15 short stories show Americans overseas and at home wrestling with the tumultuous years 1968-1981, but they are painfully, ironically current and up to date.

Moral seriousness is part of the action. The characters — Americans mostly — tough, rebellious youth, far from home, on bad roads and usually broke, test cultural and racial limits in strange, alluring, but pitiless surroundings. They are exposed to relentless existential and physical upheaval that threatens their moral underpinnings and their very survival.

The author is an accomplished novelist, journalist, and diplomat. But above all, he was there.