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The Asiatics: A Novel
This extraordinary novel, first published in 1935 and now a classic, tells the story of a perceptive young American who hitchhikes across Asia -- from Beirut to the border of China -- living off the land and the hospitality of the people he meets along the way.
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First published January 1, 1935
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About the author
Frederic Prokosch
46 books12 followersFrederic Prokosch's novels The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled received widespread attention in the 1930s.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
January 25, 2021
This novel was recommended to me by Bob Newman and it was fortunate that he told me beforehand that it was a work of fiction and not a real travelogue because it might have taken me a while to realize these travel stories could not possibly have taken place. The novel was published in 1935 and was supposedly very popular in the late 1930s and greatly admired by Thomas Mann, Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus and others.
I would have preferred to have read it in English, but could not locate any English language copies. I found a secondhand copy of a Dutch translation of the book and fortunately that was alright as I think it was clearly beautifully (re?)translated into Dutch (1991). If I would have had any doubts whether this was actually a real travelogue, that doubt would have immediately been lifted as it is stated in rather big letters at the front cover of the Dutch translation that it is a ‘Roman’ (fiction). Furthermore, the novel has a very enjoyable afterword by Ian Buruma who adored the novel and thought it was ahead of its time.
Perhaps it is rather strange that I found myself preferring to read it as an actual travelogue because it describes the protagonist’s travels through the Middle East and beyond as a true journey along routes which felt real and clearly existing. Prokosch wrote a very evocative, sensitive and above all beautiful account of his imaginary wanderings. I thought it was truly exceptional writing. His contemplations on what he (or should I say his protagonist) encounters, his observations about the people he meets, the landscapes he observes and the good and bad adventures endured are a downright joy to read. I loved how he philosophied to his heart’s content about the people he met. His mild judgment of all those men and women says something about Prokosch himself. The fact that Prokosch’ story is purely fictional actually baffled me and even heightened my admiration for this unique tale and his boldness to write it. I also loved that delicate sexual edge in his observations of both women and men, although you clearly feel his preference goes to those long male eye-lashes and firm buttocks.
Albert Camus observed it well:
"Prokosch has invented what might be called the geographical novel, in which he mingles sensuality with irony, lucidity with mystery. He conveys a fatalistic sense of life half hidden beneath a rich animal energy. He is a master of moods and undertones, a virtuoso in the feeling of place, and he writes in a style of supple elegance. It is Arcadia manufactured by a restless mind.”
I am grateful to Bob Newman for recommending this unique book to me. Thanks, Bob, I would have hated to miss it. It was a great pleasure to read.
I would have preferred to have read it in English, but could not locate any English language copies. I found a secondhand copy of a Dutch translation of the book and fortunately that was alright as I think it was clearly beautifully (re?)translated into Dutch (1991). If I would have had any doubts whether this was actually a real travelogue, that doubt would have immediately been lifted as it is stated in rather big letters at the front cover of the Dutch translation that it is a ‘Roman’ (fiction). Furthermore, the novel has a very enjoyable afterword by Ian Buruma who adored the novel and thought it was ahead of its time.
Perhaps it is rather strange that I found myself preferring to read it as an actual travelogue because it describes the protagonist’s travels through the Middle East and beyond as a true journey along routes which felt real and clearly existing. Prokosch wrote a very evocative, sensitive and above all beautiful account of his imaginary wanderings. I thought it was truly exceptional writing. His contemplations on what he (or should I say his protagonist) encounters, his observations about the people he meets, the landscapes he observes and the good and bad adventures endured are a downright joy to read. I loved how he philosophied to his heart’s content about the people he met. His mild judgment of all those men and women says something about Prokosch himself. The fact that Prokosch’ story is purely fictional actually baffled me and even heightened my admiration for this unique tale and his boldness to write it. I also loved that delicate sexual edge in his observations of both women and men, although you clearly feel his preference goes to those long male eye-lashes and firm buttocks.
Albert Camus observed it well:
"Prokosch has invented what might be called the geographical novel, in which he mingles sensuality with irony, lucidity with mystery. He conveys a fatalistic sense of life half hidden beneath a rich animal energy. He is a master of moods and undertones, a virtuoso in the feeling of place, and he writes in a style of supple elegance. It is Arcadia manufactured by a restless mind.”
I am grateful to Bob Newman for recommending this unique book to me. Thanks, Bob, I would have hated to miss it. It was a great pleasure to read.
September 13, 2020
"On the Road"-- in your dreams
A young proto-hippie in the 1920s journeys across Asia with little money and a tendency to get into trouble. He smuggles drugs, is robbed a few times, has numerous sexual adventures, lands in jail, escapes being shot, survives a plane crash, visits a maharaja, and works a short while for a weird doctor in the jungle. His often-reappearing acquaintances are mostly Westerners of the rich elite sort, though he meets the odd local who nearly always waxes philosophical. I read this book in 1955 when I was twelve. I find now that I didn't understand much. The writer was a homosexual who looked at male eyelashes a bit more than I was interested in, but whose experiences of life no doubt embittered him considerably. At age 12, this did not occur to me. Surprise, huh?
Prokosch's first novel, it attracted considerable attention in 1935 when it came out but has since sunk out of sight. Like an earlier, more mature "On the Road", it is highly philosophical, full of ponderings on the meaning of life, the need for love, the need "to be fragile, be tender, to humiliate yourself and let the discoloration of dream close in on you." However, the protagonist is even less focused than Kerouac. Such a seeker wants to "discover the way to live in this most fruitless and tantalizing of worlds." (p.145) People are cold because "nothing's left, because we never really believed anything, we never rose above the world of objects, we never deep down within us were alive. It's the age of inversion, the negative age." (p.206) His view peruses the perverse nature of Man, who longs for love but is doomed to wither, decay and die.
Being a gay man in a time when homosexuality was condemned and punished had severe repercussions on the author's views and his personality. It shows in such descriptions of an old comtesse in Tehran. "Seen from the outside she was a laughable creature, like everyone else in the world; pompous, decaying, mad. Seen from the inside, even if only for an instant, she grew like everyone else into a tragic and terrifying shape. That's the only difference between laughter and terror. Man resides in a shell of absurdity. It's the thing hiding inside that gives us shivers." (p.126)
"We're all Asiatics, we're lost, the race is dying...." Thus the title takes on new meaning if you read the book to the end.
But if you do choose to read THE ASIATICS, be aware of one thing. This is a total fantasy. Prokosch had never visited any part of Asia when he wrote it. Fascinated by geography, he guessed at the look of the countries and the ways of their peoples. That wasn't enough. The book is full of the wildest inaccuracies, olive oil in Burma, weirdly named Russians, Hindus with Muslim names or vice-versa, no idea of Islam whatsoever, the coconut palms of Punjab (don't exist), lilacs where none have ever been seen, sheep in tropical Asia---the list is endless. You can't recognize the foods, the clothing, the houses, the cities and their monuments, Nothing. If you have any idea of Edward Said's "Orientalism", Prokosch's book fits right in. For him, Asians are above all, "The Other", an amorphous mass which cannot be understood by the West, usually venal, highly superstitious, tricky, but also philosophical and possessing a childlike faith lost to us "sophisticates". Or perhaps we the Westerners are sunk in materialism while Asia is more spiritual---more orientalist balderdash. "Asiatics are afraid of almost everything. Afraid of life, afraid of death, of Europe, the mountains and the sea, of God.....of any sort of reality." (p.258) Total tripe. Since Prokosch never met the real Asia, his entire book is a reflection of pictures gleaned from other, also Orientalist writers or purely from his imagination. THE ASIATICS is a vehicle for his thoughts on life and represents a personal quest for understanding. That is the only reason you might read it, though it is an imaginary adventure tale too.
A young proto-hippie in the 1920s journeys across Asia with little money and a tendency to get into trouble. He smuggles drugs, is robbed a few times, has numerous sexual adventures, lands in jail, escapes being shot, survives a plane crash, visits a maharaja, and works a short while for a weird doctor in the jungle. His often-reappearing acquaintances are mostly Westerners of the rich elite sort, though he meets the odd local who nearly always waxes philosophical. I read this book in 1955 when I was twelve. I find now that I didn't understand much. The writer was a homosexual who looked at male eyelashes a bit more than I was interested in, but whose experiences of life no doubt embittered him considerably. At age 12, this did not occur to me. Surprise, huh?
Prokosch's first novel, it attracted considerable attention in 1935 when it came out but has since sunk out of sight. Like an earlier, more mature "On the Road", it is highly philosophical, full of ponderings on the meaning of life, the need for love, the need "to be fragile, be tender, to humiliate yourself and let the discoloration of dream close in on you." However, the protagonist is even less focused than Kerouac. Such a seeker wants to "discover the way to live in this most fruitless and tantalizing of worlds." (p.145) People are cold because "nothing's left, because we never really believed anything, we never rose above the world of objects, we never deep down within us were alive. It's the age of inversion, the negative age." (p.206) His view peruses the perverse nature of Man, who longs for love but is doomed to wither, decay and die.
Being a gay man in a time when homosexuality was condemned and punished had severe repercussions on the author's views and his personality. It shows in such descriptions of an old comtesse in Tehran. "Seen from the outside she was a laughable creature, like everyone else in the world; pompous, decaying, mad. Seen from the inside, even if only for an instant, she grew like everyone else into a tragic and terrifying shape. That's the only difference between laughter and terror. Man resides in a shell of absurdity. It's the thing hiding inside that gives us shivers." (p.126)
"We're all Asiatics, we're lost, the race is dying...." Thus the title takes on new meaning if you read the book to the end.
But if you do choose to read THE ASIATICS, be aware of one thing. This is a total fantasy. Prokosch had never visited any part of Asia when he wrote it. Fascinated by geography, he guessed at the look of the countries and the ways of their peoples. That wasn't enough. The book is full of the wildest inaccuracies, olive oil in Burma, weirdly named Russians, Hindus with Muslim names or vice-versa, no idea of Islam whatsoever, the coconut palms of Punjab (don't exist), lilacs where none have ever been seen, sheep in tropical Asia---the list is endless. You can't recognize the foods, the clothing, the houses, the cities and their monuments, Nothing. If you have any idea of Edward Said's "Orientalism", Prokosch's book fits right in. For him, Asians are above all, "The Other", an amorphous mass which cannot be understood by the West, usually venal, highly superstitious, tricky, but also philosophical and possessing a childlike faith lost to us "sophisticates". Or perhaps we the Westerners are sunk in materialism while Asia is more spiritual---more orientalist balderdash. "Asiatics are afraid of almost everything. Afraid of life, afraid of death, of Europe, the mountains and the sea, of God.....of any sort of reality." (p.258) Total tripe. Since Prokosch never met the real Asia, his entire book is a reflection of pictures gleaned from other, also Orientalist writers or purely from his imagination. THE ASIATICS is a vehicle for his thoughts on life and represents a personal quest for understanding. That is the only reason you might read it, though it is an imaginary adventure tale too.
Read
March 1, 2023This is a tough one. I have absolutely no idea how I got hip to this, a profoundly unfashionable novel about a sort of proto-backpacker making his way across the Asian continent and getting into varying degrees of trouble in a very different era of travel. And it was a pretty enjoyable madcap adventure the whole way through, with a legitimately gorgeous ending. I would hardly call this a great novel, but as far as sophisticated beach reads go? Pretty great!
January 15, 2009
I was a little uncomfortable with the way the narrator was describing all the Asian people he was meeting in his travels. Something about it was a little stereotypical and condescending. It definitely felt dated. By the end, though, there were other things about the book that were bothering me. Like the way the narrator was traveling all over Asia, but kept bumping into the same people. And how he had no money, but was easily and frequently provided for by wealthy people he met. When are travels ever like that? Also, I got pretty weary of all the philosophical hooey all the characters kept spouting about happiness and the purpose of life. I didn't hate the book, but thought it mediocre at best.
July 31, 2010
This novel is an extraordinary, creative act of imagination. Prokosch writes a compelling tale of travel across Asia, from the Levant east, even though he had not visited any of the locales he describes. That he succeeds so completely in spite of violating the first rule of writing -- write what you know -- makes this even more amazing. "The Asiatics" is filled with vivid characterization and haunting imagery. This is a particularly powerful work for anyone in journalism who has to edit copy filed from all corners of the world, many of which one will never see. This is not a perfect book, of course; he writes about "Asiatics" as if one could generalize about the vast array of cultures and traditions found across the enormous contintent. His harsh judgments about the Ganges and other religious sites fall flat, not only because of the overtones of racism but because he never actually saw them. Even so, this is an evocative and poetic work well worth reading.
August 19, 2008
This is book is very trippy. Imagined asia from 1930s america, evokes some actual trips i've taken in asia, as if remembered through an opium haze. Not sure if it would be politically correct, these days. Sort of a counterpoint to Kafka's Amerika.
August 9, 2021
While one could easily and rightly point to many faults in this novel, particularly his portrayals of various native people he encounters across the Asian countries he travels through, the writing is sublime and Prokoshch's imagination intoxicating. In the end one senses a deep love of human experience, or a fascination with it at least, bubbling to the surface. It's both amazing and unsurprising that he wrote this in his 20s.
February 20, 2025
Ein Kellerfund, ein literarisches Werk, was zu seiner Zeit (1935) wohl recht bekannt und renommiert war.
Der Icherzähler, ein junger Amerikaner mit wenig Geld, startet seine Asienreise in Syrien. Er wandert ziellos von Land zu Land, trifft ständig Leute, die ihn mitnehmen. Viele fangen sofort hochphilosophische und persönliche Gespräche mit ihm an.
Einmal landet er im Gefängnis, nachdem er zusammen mit einem kommunistischen Agitator verhaftet wird.
Nicht das, was ich erhofft hatte. Ich hätte gern "literarisch verarbeitete" Eindrücke von Reisen durch Asien aus einer Zeit vor dem Massentourismus gehabt. Doch Prokosch hat sich das ganze aus den Fingern gesaugt, er war gar nie in Asien. Abgebrochen auf S. 125 / 357.
Der Icherzähler, ein junger Amerikaner mit wenig Geld, startet seine Asienreise in Syrien. Er wandert ziellos von Land zu Land, trifft ständig Leute, die ihn mitnehmen. Viele fangen sofort hochphilosophische und persönliche Gespräche mit ihm an.
Einmal landet er im Gefängnis, nachdem er zusammen mit einem kommunistischen Agitator verhaftet wird.
Nicht das, was ich erhofft hatte. Ich hätte gern "literarisch verarbeitete" Eindrücke von Reisen durch Asien aus einer Zeit vor dem Massentourismus gehabt. Doch Prokosch hat sich das ganze aus den Fingern gesaugt, er war gar nie in Asien. Abgebrochen auf S. 125 / 357.
January 19, 2013
The blurb from Camus on the back of the book describes this book as sensual and I would have to agree, sensual and cruel at least in its description of people. The Asians in this story are resolutely foreign to the narrator throughout and the landscape strangely vacant. None of the problems of travel seem to bother the narrator and he usefully keeps running into familiar non-Asians throughout his trip from Beirut to China. Not an enjoyable read in its tiresome narrative, its vague travel descriptions, or its general assumptions about humanity. Last time I take book recommendations from Camus, Thomas Mann, and Andre Gide (all who praise the book).
June 1, 2008
Couldnt make it past page 75
May 23, 2018
I picked this book up second-hand and read it over 30 years ago without knowing anything about it
I found it an interesting and inventive "travel" book, by an American armchair tourist out to "explore" the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent in the mid-1930s.
I found it an interesting and inventive "travel" book, by an American armchair tourist out to "explore" the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent in the mid-1930s.
March 8, 2020
Velmi jsem váhala, zda dát 2 nebo 3 hvězdy. Kniha se mi špatně četla, ztrácela jsem se ve vyprávění, o samotném cestování tam toho bylo velice poskrovnu. Je to jedna z těch knih, kterou jsem vzhledem k tématu a popisu hrozně chtěla mít ráda, ale přečíst ji mě stálo spoustu přemlouvání. Trochu bych to přirovnala ke Kerouacově On the road (fanoušci prominou), která ve mně vyvolávala podobné pocity. Na druhou stranu věřím, že v době vydání v roce 1935 to bylo neotřelé dílo.
July 1, 2015
I ran across a mention of this fairly thoughtful and fun novel (but still, has some outdated and gross generalities about “Asians” and the “meaning of asia” and religions, for all its modernism), and funny novel too in that author never actually traveled anywhere outside of ne usa, in a book of letters of Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwinbruce chatwin he was very inspired by this prokosch novel and goaded him to hit the silk road. I think too a lot of hippies may have used ‘the asiatics’ as a blueprint for bumming in the east, maybe. This novel has some big plotholes, and some soppy romance(ics), and some flatness, but also has some inspirational flights about why we travel, even if just to the local park five minutes away. Try to get the pico iyer introduced edition as he helps set the stage a bit.
From page 65, he was remembering this young woman he met briefly, and this is short thought on memory
“Memory: a miraculous and omnipotent thing, if you only stop to think about it. A lighthouse in the mind, rising from the level sand beaches and the spotted ocean rocks, looking across god knows what invisible and unconjecturable depths; a man-made thing, creator of hope and fear, a recognizable bit of something amid the uncontrollable things all around you. It was here that I learned how memory can keep the diseased heart beating; and how faithful it is, how silkily cruel, how pityingly treacherous. Not beautiful, precisely, except when striving to penetrate that enormous fog; and then, touchingly human thing that it always is, as beautiful as anything can ever be for us.”
Here from page 327-328, author muses on human’s fate and wishes and thinking they want beauty but being destroyed by their wishes, being ‘destined’ for corruption and dust. Here is protag in Bangkok ‘siam’ and just re-met Hamadullah, the fired-in-disgraced factotum of a pasha in india who had befriended him earlier in novel.
“What is really touching, I thought, as I watched Hamadullah disappearing in his rickshaw, is to observe how life affects human beings; how by nature man strives toward something he does not quite comprehend, how he reinterprets each intensity through which he passes into terms of the eternal; in short, his endless desire for the beautiful. But what is terrifying is to observe how life can gradually kill the freshness of this desire in all of us, in the weak and stupid as well as the subtle and experienced, how the beautiful is twisted and degraded, how a desire for the beautiful becomes a frightful parody, an obscene sort of ritual, and ends up by tainting precisely that in us which is closest to the eternal. Be satisfied with very little, desire nothing---that is what Prince Sawankalok had said; a desire for beauty brings more sadness than joy.”
“I wandered about in the enormous city the next morning. Tiresome, modern, dusty, full of cars and tramways and dingy little Chinese shops and dingy little Chinamen going cloppety-clop in their clogs across the cobblestones.
There were some rich Europeans walking along the better-known streets. They were laughing all the time. They swayed when they walked. The women screamed hoarsely and the men laughed in high thin voices. They were comparatively rich and very spoiled. All of them seemed to be have been drinking steadily for several years. They pretended to be happy, but actually they looked distinctly unhappy. They looked afraid. They looked as if they no longer understood anything at all. They were pawing one another all the time, but it was only a pretense, a game. They looked as if they were simply waiting for death. I remembered the natives in the fields and the forests and villages: dead, but waiting for life.”
From page 65, he was remembering this young woman he met briefly, and this is short thought on memory
“Memory: a miraculous and omnipotent thing, if you only stop to think about it. A lighthouse in the mind, rising from the level sand beaches and the spotted ocean rocks, looking across god knows what invisible and unconjecturable depths; a man-made thing, creator of hope and fear, a recognizable bit of something amid the uncontrollable things all around you. It was here that I learned how memory can keep the diseased heart beating; and how faithful it is, how silkily cruel, how pityingly treacherous. Not beautiful, precisely, except when striving to penetrate that enormous fog; and then, touchingly human thing that it always is, as beautiful as anything can ever be for us.”
Here from page 327-328, author muses on human’s fate and wishes and thinking they want beauty but being destroyed by their wishes, being ‘destined’ for corruption and dust. Here is protag in Bangkok ‘siam’ and just re-met Hamadullah, the fired-in-disgraced factotum of a pasha in india who had befriended him earlier in novel.
“What is really touching, I thought, as I watched Hamadullah disappearing in his rickshaw, is to observe how life affects human beings; how by nature man strives toward something he does not quite comprehend, how he reinterprets each intensity through which he passes into terms of the eternal; in short, his endless desire for the beautiful. But what is terrifying is to observe how life can gradually kill the freshness of this desire in all of us, in the weak and stupid as well as the subtle and experienced, how the beautiful is twisted and degraded, how a desire for the beautiful becomes a frightful parody, an obscene sort of ritual, and ends up by tainting precisely that in us which is closest to the eternal. Be satisfied with very little, desire nothing---that is what Prince Sawankalok had said; a desire for beauty brings more sadness than joy.”
“I wandered about in the enormous city the next morning. Tiresome, modern, dusty, full of cars and tramways and dingy little Chinese shops and dingy little Chinamen going cloppety-clop in their clogs across the cobblestones.
There were some rich Europeans walking along the better-known streets. They were laughing all the time. They swayed when they walked. The women screamed hoarsely and the men laughed in high thin voices. They were comparatively rich and very spoiled. All of them seemed to be have been drinking steadily for several years. They pretended to be happy, but actually they looked distinctly unhappy. They looked afraid. They looked as if they no longer understood anything at all. They were pawing one another all the time, but it was only a pretense, a game. They looked as if they were simply waiting for death. I remembered the natives in the fields and the forests and villages: dead, but waiting for life.”
November 17, 2018
Though the book was considered a masterpiece by Gide, Mann, and Camus when it was published in 1935, The Asiatics doesn't look so daring eighty years later with its covert (?) gay subtext and overt misanthropy. Although I would say the writing is pretty good; it's in its ridiculous coincidences and indefensible judgments of Asians and an Asia that Prokosch never visited where it fails to deliver. I suppose in its day it resonated with a world weary intelligentsia (primarily European, of course) who felt that humankind was circling the drain, and events in Europe were reinforcing that belief. Ultimately, its skimming of the surface of Eastern religious thought (Prokosch seems to have just the haziest understanding of Hinduism and Buddhism) hints at, but does not suggest a convincing antidote to the nihilism that instead prevails in this not so noble failure.
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November 15, 2010Non escludo di riprenderlo in mano, anzi, con tutta probabilità riproverò a leggerlo, ma non certo per le sue qualità letterarie. Ciò che qui salta agli occhi è l'importanza antropologica di questo romanzo: siamo di fronte a uno di quei casi in cui narratore, protagonista e autore del romanzo confluiscono in un'unica entità: l'occidentale arrapatissimo d'odori d'Asia. Ecco, la mia curiosità antropologica è proprio questa: spiare questa figura una e trina e il suo oriente da cartolina, traboccante di ladri, muezzin, puttane e narghilè.
November 26, 2007
I just couldn't finish it (gasp!) The dated writing, the stereotypes, the general mopiness of it.
This was one of our book club books fetched from an Oprah magazine interviewers suggestion. I've said it before and I'll say it again... I HATE oprah books (even though it technically isn't.) I had to order it online due to the fact that it is out of print. Even our library didn't have it. Well guess what?! They do now as I'm givin' it to them.
This was one of our book club books fetched from an Oprah magazine interviewers suggestion. I've said it before and I'll say it again... I HATE oprah books (even though it technically isn't.) I had to order it online due to the fact that it is out of print. Even our library didn't have it. Well guess what?! They do now as I'm givin' it to them.
November 27, 2020
The review is taken from my Instagram account: @descanto
A German American in his twenties tries to get to Japan. Why Japan? It is where his uncle has been living. It is said that his uncle is wealthy and if he behaves well, he may get some fortunes from his uncle.
His long journey starts from Europe. He steps his foots in Turkey and Rusia before making it to Iran, Ceylon - now Sri Lanka, and India. He meets so many people: the prince in Iran, the maharajas in India, the thugs, the call girl and some more. He has his ups and downs but he always returns to the roads and continues his journey again.
The book may seems like an auto-biography of Prokosch himself as a traveler. Little did we know that Prokosch has never made it to Asia and everything he says in his novel is just based on his imagination or what he hears from people. Gide, Mann and Camus praised him and this novel after it's published for the first time. The Asiatics does not only talk about one's long journey to Asia but also tries to depict the people of certain area through its aforementioned characters.
Well, the characters and plots are somehow flat and the depiction is somehow over-generalised but the book is entertaining. Prokosch reminds me of Honoré de Balzac, a French novelist who has never been to Java but writes a journey to Java based on his friend Grand Besançon's journey.
It leaves me also a question: what is it in The Orient that keeps attracting the painters like Walter Spies and Theo Meier to picture it into canvas; notable researchers like Mead or Heertz to unveil its secret, the explorer like Marco Polo to stop by and prolly great novelists like Balzac and Prokosch to write about it.
If Balzac keeps saying "Happy are those who die in Java," Prokosch will probably say, "Happy are those who witness the beauty of Asia through their eyes and experience it."
PS: the last three slides shows Prokosch's-so-called-queer-photography which were taken by George Platt Lynes. Those pictures are stunning in my opinion.
A German American in his twenties tries to get to Japan. Why Japan? It is where his uncle has been living. It is said that his uncle is wealthy and if he behaves well, he may get some fortunes from his uncle.
His long journey starts from Europe. He steps his foots in Turkey and Rusia before making it to Iran, Ceylon - now Sri Lanka, and India. He meets so many people: the prince in Iran, the maharajas in India, the thugs, the call girl and some more. He has his ups and downs but he always returns to the roads and continues his journey again.
The book may seems like an auto-biography of Prokosch himself as a traveler. Little did we know that Prokosch has never made it to Asia and everything he says in his novel is just based on his imagination or what he hears from people. Gide, Mann and Camus praised him and this novel after it's published for the first time. The Asiatics does not only talk about one's long journey to Asia but also tries to depict the people of certain area through its aforementioned characters.
Well, the characters and plots are somehow flat and the depiction is somehow over-generalised but the book is entertaining. Prokosch reminds me of Honoré de Balzac, a French novelist who has never been to Java but writes a journey to Java based on his friend Grand Besançon's journey.
It leaves me also a question: what is it in The Orient that keeps attracting the painters like Walter Spies and Theo Meier to picture it into canvas; notable researchers like Mead or Heertz to unveil its secret, the explorer like Marco Polo to stop by and prolly great novelists like Balzac and Prokosch to write about it.
If Balzac keeps saying "Happy are those who die in Java," Prokosch will probably say, "Happy are those who witness the beauty of Asia through their eyes and experience it."
PS: the last three slides shows Prokosch's-so-called-queer-photography which were taken by George Platt Lynes. Those pictures are stunning in my opinion.
July 17, 2020
Asia serves as the backdrop for the young protagonist's search for the meaning of life: a random series of encounters. He is a young American who makes his way from Beirut to the southern border of China. Along the way, he observes, experiences, encounters, and initiates a wide range of behavior, without any moral discrimination. Acts of generosity and perversity are accepted equally. The book contains many expressions of the meaningless of life and the fear of death. Love, in the form of uncommitted romantic encounters, appears to be the only solace.
Much of the book centers on the word "happiness." The lack of it in the civilized west, the equal lack of it in Asia, but with the advantage of aware resignation. At one point, a Persian prince tells the protagonist: "You are an Asian at heart. An Asian is never happy." Yet in the last sentences of the book, as he nears Hong Kong, he says, "Yes, there was no denying it, I was very happy."
Much of the book centers on the word "happiness." The lack of it in the civilized west, the equal lack of it in Asia, but with the advantage of aware resignation. At one point, a Persian prince tells the protagonist: "You are an Asian at heart. An Asian is never happy." Yet in the last sentences of the book, as he nears Hong Kong, he says, "Yes, there was no denying it, I was very happy."
January 31, 2017
I read this book with the expectation that it is in the same league as some of the travelogues from the same period. It is quite different from those. It is a fictional travelogue. It is fast paced, but sometimes very cliched. Perhaps considering the year it was written in, it is a window into how different parts of the world was perceived at that time.
October 17, 2025
The novel follows a young American traveling through Asia about 100 years ago, but the exquisite prose takes you on a much deeper journey. I found myself asking how much of history is written this way, how much perception shapes reality, how much of my own memories are colored by state of mind. Whatever this was, I'll never forget it.
April 14, 2021
2.5, actually. OutdAted in its racist portrayal of anyone not European. And the whole story is so closed within the narrator’s head the the where almost has no place in the tale. Interesting as a period piece.
December 31, 2021
Betoverend en bedwelmend. Verbeeldingskracht gegoten in poëtische taal.
June 22, 2008
I learnt only recently
that Frederic Prokosch didn't actually travel through all the countries he describes. Neither have I, but his description of Ladakh, in the Himalayas of north-western India matches my recall of 22 years ago.
"''I believe all of The Asiatics is accurate, geographically and socially speaking,'' he said after the novel's original publication in 1935, when he was 27. ''I've skirmished about a bit in northern Africa and western Asia, and now I'm off to the Balkans, Bukhara and Samarkand.''
The Asiatics is seemingly an autobiography of an American in his twenties exploring the world and thus exploring himself. It is the journey itself rather than the arrival which is of value, so we gradually see the protagonist 'growing up' as he learns about different philosophies.
It is sad to note that he was prescient; sad because surely what he forecast is now upon us.
When travelling, I find it comforting to read and extract bon mots, words that encapsulate and clarify my ill-formed thoughts.
When I came to Indonesia at the tailend of 1987, I brought two books with me, knowing that both would be reread more than once.
This classic is one of those.
"''I believe all of The Asiatics is accurate, geographically and socially speaking,'' he said after the novel's original publication in 1935, when he was 27. ''I've skirmished about a bit in northern Africa and western Asia, and now I'm off to the Balkans, Bukhara and Samarkand.''
The Asiatics is seemingly an autobiography of an American in his twenties exploring the world and thus exploring himself. It is the journey itself rather than the arrival which is of value, so we gradually see the protagonist 'growing up' as he learns about different philosophies.
It is sad to note that he was prescient; sad because surely what he forecast is now upon us.
Take away our clothes, our food, our liquor, our quaint sexual pleasures, or fatiguing little conversations and our loathsome excitements about this and that: what's left? A hollow thing, like one of those silver Christmas-tree ornaments, with no more blood or warmth. Let the snow fall and we're cold as ice, let the wind rustle the branches and we drop and shatter once and for all.
Nothing's left, because we never really lived anything, we never rose above the world of objects, we never deep down within us were alive. It's the age of inversion, the negative age. We're changing into tremendous plants, and soon we'll be breathing carbon dioxide, at the rate we're going.
When travelling, I find it comforting to read and extract bon mots, words that encapsulate and clarify my ill-formed thoughts.
When I came to Indonesia at the tailend of 1987, I brought two books with me, knowing that both would be reread more than once.
This classic is one of those.
November 1, 2015
This book describes a psychological landscape as much as an actual one. It should be read as fantasy in spite of the realism of it's prose and description. Asia, when referred to,should be read as the "unconscious" or the subconscious.
Prokosch obsessed over maps and travelogues to inform the geography but to see it as a story about a journey across a continent misses the point. Prokosch is aiming at the way globalization homogenizes the imperialists and imperialized alike, leading to a spiritually bereft mental landscape.
The characters are admittedly a little flat, but if not purposefully (though possibly), then necessarily so for the book's theme. The stereotypical and xenophobic descriptions of people of Asian cultures reflect the mindset of imperialism and the way it homogenizes individuals and peoples, particularly those with differences. If it makes you uncomfortable that's a sign that it's effective work. Thus, the use of the term asiatic, which is anachronistic.
That he runs into the same people is comment that certain archetypes and mindsets transcend location and time. You run into them everywhere, more so in a modern world getting ever smaller and more generalized as we become global and industrial. This is the ultimate modernist novel, beautifully constructed and written.
Prokosch obsessed over maps and travelogues to inform the geography but to see it as a story about a journey across a continent misses the point. Prokosch is aiming at the way globalization homogenizes the imperialists and imperialized alike, leading to a spiritually bereft mental landscape.
The characters are admittedly a little flat, but if not purposefully (though possibly), then necessarily so for the book's theme. The stereotypical and xenophobic descriptions of people of Asian cultures reflect the mindset of imperialism and the way it homogenizes individuals and peoples, particularly those with differences. If it makes you uncomfortable that's a sign that it's effective work. Thus, the use of the term asiatic, which is anachronistic.
That he runs into the same people is comment that certain archetypes and mindsets transcend location and time. You run into them everywhere, more so in a modern world getting ever smaller and more generalized as we become global and industrial. This is the ultimate modernist novel, beautifully constructed and written.
June 6, 2014
I really appreciated the forward of this book because it gave me a check list of things to watch for and the time in which it was written. For 1935 it would seem that this book would have and should have been censored. It's brazen in many ways. The fact that the author did not do any of these travels upon writing this reminds me of Jack London. Is the story any less valid since it was not lived before penned? I found myself enjoying the book more than half way into and then it just became preposterous. If you remember the move Forrest Gump there became a point where it just broke down to slap stick funny with all of these unreal events that Gump was supposed to have inspired. Charm quickly fades to gaudy and that's exactly what happens with the central character.
Sadly this book has taken on a cult following who think they can have a gap year like this, those people need to remember that this is fiction. Real travel has lot more boring things involved that just don't make people want to follow your footsteps.
Sadly this book has taken on a cult following who think they can have a gap year like this, those people need to remember that this is fiction. Real travel has lot more boring things involved that just don't make people want to follow your footsteps.
January 25, 2014
He leído el libro en castellano. Me ha resultado difícil, un poco por el estilo rebuscado que el autor usa, un poco por el ritmo cansino de la narración. Como otros lectores han destacado, me parece que presente una imagen demasiado estereotipada y negativa de las gentes que encuentra: los faquires tienen todos caras de tonto y las indígenas expresiones vacías como cetáceos, con la excepción de algún viejo sabio "cuya cara es un laberinto de arrugas". Tampoco entiendo la razón de insistir en encontrar la misma gente desde Líbano a Burma, al igual que soltar por todas partes conversaciones sobre la felicidad y el sentido de la vida como si lo primero que se nos ocurre al conocer alguien es sacarle estos temas. Por lo demás, este Prokosch parece tener talento, ¡si sólo lo hubiera invertido en algo más luminoso!
September 19, 2015
I wasn't sure if I would like this, but to my surprise I really did enjoy it. It tells of the travels of a young man who is hitchhiking/wandering through Asia and into China. The book is fiction and the author himself had never been to any of the countries he is writing about. Descriptions of ethnic peoples aren't quite right (described stereotypically in most instances). The young man traveling seems to have, on most occasions, the best luck in that strangers often offer him rides and invite him to stay in their homes. One thing was a bit unrealistic I think; and that was he kept running into people he had made acquaintance with along the way. Also, there was a lot of philosophical discussions about life and happiness. But that was bearable, even though I generally dislike philosophy.
January 18, 2016
Prokosch's narrative is lantern-lit and filled with the spices of a busy Indian marketplace. And though he never visited any of the places in the book himself, writing the novel as a research fellow at Yale, he lures the reader's gaze onto vibrant paintings of town after town, so real and vividly imagined, one cannot doubt their credulity. Each town lies like a jewel on the Asiatic landscape waiting for the reader's discovery. He will make your belly ache for ornate meals and philosophical conversations shared with friends on a Saigon river-bank and your heart will pine for trysts and friendships with acquaintances one can only make by searching an entire continent.
October 10, 2013
I was attracted to this book because it takes place in the Middle East where the author had never set foot by the time he wrote the book at age 27. Although the idea of an imaginary travelogue had lots of appeal, I found the book immature and repetitious. We see the nameless protagonist flitting from country to country, encountering predictable snags and dangers, like kidnapping at the hands of bandits. Some characters reappear and interact differently with the narrator when they do, but the book didn't really work for me as a coming-of-age story, or as anything, really. I'll grant it has a sometimes oneiric quality to it, but its lack of shape and purpose bothered me.
February 18, 2013
Considering the author never traveled the lands he writes about, nor met any of its inhabitants, this book is more myth than fiction. The prose was engaging and kept me interested and the author has an incredible imagination. What the book does capture is the existentialism that one can feel while traveling across varied landscapes and cultures.
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