Tan smart | The journey

The sunny days are perfect for relaxing, but there’s no need to put your brain on vacation. Here are four suggestions from our columnists for entertaining and thinking in the sun, one theme at a time. This week, travel.

Lost in Translation

Japan, what a fascinating country. The film Lost in Translation translates well this feeling of change of scenery that we feel in Tokyo. For 1 hour 42 minutes, filmmaker Sofia Coppola makes us live like a tourist in Tokyo. Lost in Translation is not just an intriguing journey set in Japan. It is also a journey through time. When Bill Murray’s character, a jaded actor in the midst of a midlife crisis, picks up his phone and fax messages at the hotel, it reminds me with nostalgia of a time when we didn’t carry our lives around in our cell phones, when communication across the world wasn’t instantaneous.

Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot, The Press

Lost in Translation, a Sofia Coppola film starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Available for rental and purchase (e.g. AppleTV)

All your children saywill kickand

There is a joy in discovering a prolific author late in life. When we regretfully finish our most recent book, we know that several others await us. This is what happened to me with the work of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, French of Rwandan origin, survivor of the Tutsi genocide, whose magnificent collection I first read Overturning misfortune and the poignant story The convoi. I continued the journey to the land of his painful memory with his first novel All your children scattered (I read), Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie 2020. A touching story of returning to the native country and of transmission.

Rima Elkouri, The Press

All your children scatteredof Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, J’ai lu editions, 221 pages

Are you following me?

I loved the book Disoriented by Yves P. Pelletier. So, I rushed to Are you following me? upon its release. I was not disappointed. This great traveler delves back, for our greatest pleasure, into the many journeys he has made throughout his life. Tibet, Burma, Lebanon, Thailand, the Far North, the list is long. And he does it with a mastered pen and an unbridled spirit. Above all, he does it without pretension. What interests him are encounters with others. And too bad if the language puts a barrier. He manages to mumble something or simply listen, as he does with a Tibetan monk he insisted on finding. Added to these stories are some aspects of his professional life and several of his eventful love life. These episodes are as funny as they are touching. If you were to put only one book in your suitcase this summer, make it this one.

Mario Girard, The Press

Are you following me?by Yves P. Pelletier, VLB Éditeur, 272 pages

Black Sea et Red Sands

There are tons of travel books, but there are few travel books that appeal to all the senses. Those of Caroline Eden, a British journalist who is particularly fond of Central Asia, Turkey, the Caucasus and the entire border between East and West, are among them. The author lets her prose gambol between politics, society, music, culinary culture and landscapes. We bite into the story of the people who cross her path as much as into a ripe apricot from Uzbekistan in July before getting to the stove to concoct a recipe that we found between two chapters. Hachette had the excellent idea of ​​translating two of her most recent works into French, Black Sea et Red Sands.

Laura-Julie Perreault, The Press

Black Sea – A culinary journey between East and West et Red Sands – A culinary journey through the steppes of Asiaby Caroline Eden, Hachette editions, 280 and 309 pages