12er Englisch LK Lektüre

Witzig, frech, modern und kritisch: http://www.amazon.de/Are-You-Experienced-William-Sutcliffe/dp/0140272658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328212907&sr=8-1&tag=lf-21 [Anzeige]

Meine Schüler fanden's klasse!

Themen: Commonwealth, UK, youth, extreme situations, initiation, etc...

Zitat

For anyone with the slightest curiosity about travelling, or even if you've been, William Sutcliffe's tremendously funny Are You Experienced? will have you in stitches. The protagonist is Dave, a 19-year-old Londoner on a gap year before starting university. He had no intention of leaving Europe, until his best mate James, who's about to go on a trek through the Himalayas, challenges him. "Do you want to learn Fwench David? Something pwactical for your CV?" he taunts when he hears Dave is going to be a waiter at a Swiss ski resort.
Admitting his fears, ("Suffering, danger and poverty are all fine by me, but dirt and disease are two things I happen to hate") Dave is determined to prove he's not a coward and accepts an invitation to go to India with James's girlfriend Liz (in anticipation of consummating their burgeoning relationship). But by the time they get on the plane it all goes downhill. Bickering constantly, their adaption to India couldn't be more different. Liz embraces it--hugging beggars and wearing saris, while Dave's dry-humoured rants, scepticism and fear of the unknown eventually drive her away in search of her "centre".

The characters the pair meet along the way draw upon all the old hippy-traveller stereotypes, but there's also a few new ones in keeping with the times. There's Ranj--a British-born Indian who hates Indians; Jez--a public-school-educated undergraduate whose travels are being funded by daddy; and Caz and Fee who experience the side-effects of "Intimate Yoga".

While this story is ultimately a funny piece of fiction, it also addresses more serious considerations, such as cultural stereotypes, peer pressures and making life-changing decisions.

This book is irresistible and seasoned travellers will empathise with the situations Dave finds himself in, (his graphic description of a bout of Dehli-belly is guaranteed to make you feel sorry for him, and nauseous too). Be prepared to laugh out loud. --Angela Boodoo

From Publishers Weekly
David Greenford, the skeptical British narrator/hero of this breezy novel, just wants to sleep with Liz, his best friend's girlfriend, but winds up spending three harrowing and thrilling months backpacking in India the summer before starting university. The best friend, James, brags about his upcoming arduous trip to various Third World countries and once he departs, David and Liz become uneasy friends and quasi-lovers, planning their own journey to India. Once there, David's charming dorkiness clashes with Liz's hunger for the hip authenticity of tourist culture. Sutcliffe provides a little too much of their repetitive quarreling, but at moments these squabbles are hilarious. When Liz falls for Jeremy, a rich, self-righteous poseur, David is annoyed but takes "J's" advice to travel from Delhi to Manali, where pot is cheap and plentiful. Jeremy shows up there, too, directing everyone to the "real" India, complaining about the "two-week" tourists who ruin India for honest, caring travelers like himself. David finds decent company with an Anglo-Indian named Ranj, who's running away from his wealthy, prominent family. Meanwhile, Liz ditches David to join an ashram, and while David is disgusted by Liz's hypocrisy and fed up with her cultish karma-chasing attitude, he's soon confronted by his own folly. Traveling solo, David meets a journalist whose hostile diatribe pinpoints the theory at the heart of the novel: that David is merely on a "poverty-tourism adventure holiday," willfully ignorant of Indian culture and therefore offensive. The real soul-searching follows, along with David's first bout with dysentery, an extravagant week with Ranj and the grateful return to good green England. Sutcliffe's ruthless and scathing skewering of the cult of slumming teens on their life-defining holiday also rings with the genuine twang of excitable, adventurous, vulnerable youth, and is sure to be a favorite with young world-travelers on the road in search of their identity. (July) FYI: Sutcliffe's first novel, New Boy, not published in the States, was a bestseller in England.

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