Hav

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When Last Letters from Hav was published (and short-listed for the Booker Prize) in 1985, Jan Morris’s well-deserved fame as a travel writer, and the unfamiliarity of many modern readers with the nature of fiction, caused unexpected dismay among travel agents. Their clients demanded to know why they couldn’t book a cheap flight to Hav. The problem, of course, was not the destination but the place of origin. You couldn’t get there, in fact, from London or Moscow; but from Ruritania, or Orsinia, or the Invisible Cities, it was simply a matter of finding the right train.

Now, after twenty years, Morris has returned to Hav, and enhanced, deepened, and marvelously perplexed her guidebook by the addition of a final section called “Hav of the Myrmidons.” To say that the result isn’t what the common reader expects of a novel is not to question its fictionality, which is absolute, or the author’s imagination, which is vivid and exact.

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