The Kindness of Strangers is the third volume of Tom Lutz's travel narrative (after And the Monkey Learned Nothing and Drinking Mare's Milk on the Roof of the World) and features more engaging stories from his last four to five years of being "at home in the world."
The Kindness of Strangers brims with hilarious anecdotes, warm conversations with locals and observations of cultural and culinary practices. Lutz has the gift of being able to observe himself as locals might see him and readily laughs at his own foibles. Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Madagascar, Mongolia, Bhutan and Nepal are just a few of the places he introduces to readers through his seasoned lens.
Kazakhstan, where the author experiences the spring equinox festival of Nauruz, is a fascinating blend of cosmopolitan modernity and traditional provincialism. Hong Kong's gleaming urban center feels surreal, especially the central station where thousands of people wait for trains in a calm and orderly fashion on platforms that seem to stretch toward infinity. In Macao, the Las Vegas of Asia, everything exists on an oversized, antihuman scale.
Lutz is chair of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Astounded by the benevolence of the strangers he meets on the road, the author celebrates the micro-kindnesses that lift one's spirits, an antidote to the micro-aggressions of our modern world. As Lutz, a humanist and social historian, puts it: "What a wonderful species we are when we're not killing each other."
Armchair travelers restless to experience the post-pandemic world will be inspired to grab an atlas and start plotting their next adventure. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer