Feels like a novelization.

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jsmithy332 Avatar

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This book is supposedly nonfiction, but it feels like a novelization. It feels very odd that it starts with a "List of Characters" that sums up all of the main participants, all 20+ of them, with a sentence or phrase. It's kind of dehumanizing or patronizing, like this is some old 1930s travelogue. "Here we have our trusty guide Deelybop. He's a cheery fellow, old Deelybop, always ready with a kind word and a smile."

I think I would have preferred a typical nonfiction account, with some photographs, instead of novelistic descriptions of people, and describing things that happen with details and psychoanalyzing that the author can't possibly know.

Readers may very well be interested in the people and events in this book, but it's definitely not any sort of academic resource or historical account. I would firmly categorize this as a specimen of "travel writing" or "travel literature," with that sort of feel to it.