Full Circle : Around the Pacific Rim to Canada's West Coast

Palin, Michael

ISBN 10: 0771069073 / ISBN 13: 9780771069079

Published by Mcclelland & Stewart, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1997

About this Item

About new book, unmarked, in bright dj with faint scratch to front panel. 320 pp illustrated.; 8" x10".

Seller Inventory # 17010

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Full Circle : Around the Pacific Rim to Canada's West Coast
• Publisher: Mcclelland & Stewart, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0771069073
• ISBN 13: 9780771069079
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Canadian Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • All
  • Travel and Exploration

About this title

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.

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.