On the road. The Longest Way

Taiwanese edition of “The Longest Way”

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Ah, a great day! I was in Switzerland giving a presentation when this book came out:

It’s the Taiwanese version of “The Longest Way”, published by the aptly named Walkers Publishing House in Taipei.

Most people in Taiwan speak Chinese. That means this book actually doesn’t differ that much from the Chinese version, but since Taiwan has retained much of its traditional Chinese culture, the text is presented in long-form characters that are aligned in columns, read from right to left:

This means that you open the book from the other side – the page that looks like it should be the “first” page is actually its last:

Awesome!

Another thing about this book is that it is actually the first 100% intact Chinese-language edition of “The Longest Way”. Taiwan, being a society that values civil liberties, does not have any censorship, so while the Chinese version was shortened a little bit, this one is absolutely true to the original.

Oh, and the editors did this thing where they came upon a Chinese character that I had misspelled in a graffito I made in the Gobi desert, and they actually created that character from scratch and put it in the book:

Isn’t that delightful?