Self-Portrait Abroad

Self-Portrait Abroad is a sly, funny, self-effacing little book that you can read in a couple of hours: ideal for a train journey or a couple of long commutes. Such a venue would be appropriate, too, since Jean-Philippe Toussaint - a writer known for a certain kind of wry minimalism - is preoccupied here with the world of travel.

We follow Toussaint the roving writer as he drifts around the world, from Germany to North Africa to Japan, from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea, following the demands of literary conferences or personal affairs that are never quite explained. There's a persistent sense of the absurd: nothing really happens, and it's very funny indeed. Toussaint makes a titanic, elemental struggle out of a battle of nerves between himself and a shop-assistant in a Berlin butcher's shop; he finds ultimate horror and absurdity in a sleazy strip-bar in Tokyo; finally, he flirts with forbidden romance in Tunisia, although we are left guessing as to whether the affair was ever consummated, who it was actually with, or whether we just imagined the whole thing. All the time, of course, the real butt of Toussaint's wistful, scabrous humour is himself.

Slight as Self-Portrait Abroad is, it comes highly recommended for all would-be cosmopolitans and world travellers - as long as you don't mind laughing out loud in front of your fellow passengers.