Skip to main content

Bad Lands

Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet, has featured before on this blog. Two articles of his are listed in my Albania in the Media post and offer a positive view of the country:
What country has Roman and Greek ruins, a stretch of Mediterranean coast yet to be discovered by international tourism, a beautiful old mountain town with UNESCO World Heritage status, good food, wine and beer, a buzzing entertainment district in the capital city?

It seems that his reflections on Albania and a group of other countries are about to appear in book form, but if I were an Albanian I'm not sure I would be entirely happy at the prospect.

The book, due for publication in April 2007, is not mentioned on the Lonely Planet website but it is available for pre-order on amazon.com where I found the details and the cover image.

It's called Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil. Yet as well as North Korea, Iran and Iraq - the original axis of evil according to George Bush - he also includes Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Albania!

Recognising that this is stretching the concept of the axis of evil a bit, he stretches his subtitle to try to cover this very diverse group. He is a tourist on the axis of evil 'with additional excursions to places that are slightly misguided, mildly malevolent, seriously off course, extraordinarily reclusive and much misunderstood.'

Where does Albania fit in? Presumably 'much misunderstood'. Yet while Wheeler's writing on Albania has portrayed the country more sympathetically than is often the case, those who only glance at the title of this book will understand Albania even less.

Comments

The PC said…
I'm confused.
6:23 pm
Ll.T. said…
We very evill, verry, verry evill :D :D :D
8:04 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Kamëz Part 3

For those who want a lengthy detailed report into the election there will, undoubtedly, be a range of them to chose from. In the meantime, here are my brief reflections on the last few weeks. At the heart of the problems around this election is the unwarranted influence of political parties on all aspects of the electoral process. Every institution responsible for organising and facilitating the election is under the control of political parties. The Electoral Code itself was heavily revised only days before the original date for the elections and only weeks before the actual date (Law 9676 13 January 2007). It was these revisions, specifically Article 181/2, that created the overly complicated identification requirements that caused so much confusion, and undoubtedly disenfranchised some voters. Let's be clear though: these revisions were not designed to protect the interests of the electorate. They were drafted primarily because the political parties do not trust each other. The ...
27 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more