The University of Wisconsin Press


Memoir / Travel / Gay & Lesbian Interest / European Studies



Honorable Bandit
A Walk across Corsica
Brian Bouldrey

Crossing the unmappable scrub of Corsica, on the paths of bandits and patriots

Brian Bouldrey traveled to the island of Corsica, with its wine-dark Mediterranean waters, powdered-sugar beach sand, and a cuisine and wines fit for the rich. And then he walked away from all of them.

Bouldrey strapped on a backpack and walked across Napoleon's native land with the same spirit many choose to dance or drink: to celebrate, to mourn, to think, to avoid thinking, to recall, to ignore, to escape, and to arrive.

This wonderfully textured account of a two-week ramble along a famous Corsican hiking trail with his German friend Petra (she was good at the downhills while he was better at the uphills) offers readers a journal that is a launching point for reflection: thoughts on cultural differences, friendship, physical challenge, personal challenge, and getting very, very lost. Part travelogue, part memoir, and part lampoon, this book offers readers an impressionistic view of a little talked about yet stunningly beautiful landscape.

"Reading Honorable Bandit, you enter not just another country but also the secret door into Brian Bouldrey's head, and that is the real fun, living inside this wonderful, wonderful writer with his sly humor and infectious tenderness for the world. I smiled or laughed out loud at every page. As often, I was moved by the author's poignant meditations. I didn't want the book to ever end."–Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History and An Obsession with Butterflies

this is a photo of the author, Brian Bouldrey, in shirt sleeves, with his arms crossed. He wears glasses.Brian Bouldrey has written six books and edited six anthologies, including three volumes of Best American Gay Fiction. His edited collection Wrestling with the Angel: Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men won a Lambda Literary Award and his memoir Monster: Adventures in American Machismo was a Lambda finalist. He is the author of the novel The Boom Economy: Or, Scenes from Clerical Life, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press. He teaches creative writing at Northwestern University.

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the cover of Honorable Bandit is based on a photo of a hiker in Corsica. A few rocky outcrops, a mountain and a small hiker. on the left is an olive-drab strap with a tag bearing the author's name.

October 2007
LC: 2007011728 DC
256 pp.    6 x 9     5 drawings

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Cloth $26.95 t
ISBN 978-0-299-22320-5
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The Terrace Books logo is designed in the shape of a book with a Union chair in silhouette on the cover. The words Terrace Books, Madison, Wisconsin appear also.
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

"Bouldrey's language is beautiful and pitch perfect; his story is deeply moving, wrenching sometimes, but always funny and uplifting and layered with an exquisite care. Take this pilgrimage with Bouldrey; you will be a better person for it."
–Chris Abani, author of The Virgin Flames and Graceland

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