The Western Journey. A novel by Percival
Västerlandsfärden. En hednisk historia
(publisher: CKM Förlag, Stockholm 2010) is a novel by Percival. Possible title in English: The Western Journey. A Heathen Story or The Journey of the West. A Heathen History or Light on the Occident. This is a revised version of a book that penetrates and reveals the mentality of the Western society. The protagonist is a camel-caretaker, not a camel-driver. This caretaker is not pulling his camels' legs. He takes care of his companions, and finally he ends up with only one camel. Who is this camel? No reviewer or reader has so far been able to solve this riddle.
One of the reviewers (Benny Holmberg, Tidningen Kulturen) can see "facts piling up like logs on the river" – and of course they are. Facts are piling up, and the camel-caretaker is trying to understand them, the Western facts, during his stay in the Saharian desert.
He has been a fact collector during a long period, and these facts have become a big rubbish-heap outside his desert cave …
When his girlfriend comes on her camel from Timbuktu he is letting go of his fact ambitions. She is kidding him and he kids back. They start to dance, a whirling dance, a dervish dance. And out of this dance a new world is born, a utopia where people have left their old destruction technology, their old explosive man power. In this utopia the natural elements (sun, wind, earth, and water) play the main part. They heal and regenerate … This is just an inkling of what you can find in this book not yet translated into English.
It's a novel full of puns and Gallic esprit, a sense of humour you will find in the works by James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
In a chapter called "In the Heart of Europe" you can read about a meeting with Beckett whose play Endgame is mentioned in a significant way at the beginning of the Western Journey.
How long has this journey been going on, and what do the ancient Egyptians say about the Western world? Read and you will get the answer.
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More information about Percival´s books and music:
www.artdistribution.se
www.myspace.com/transformationalvoices