"The gist of our dialogue had been that if she was mad I was mad too: I was unwilling to let myself be strangled by that prudent life that everybody advocated. I also was convinced that— whether we succeed or not— it is our job to search for the significance of life."

The Cruel Way and Alle Wege Sind Offen (published in English as All the Roads are Open) are two accounts of an incredible road trip. In 1939, Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Ella Maillart - both women were Swiss journalists and experienced travelers - set off from their native Switzerland on the eve of WWII to escape the madness of Europe and drive (yes, drive) across Europe, Turkey, Persia (Iran) to Afghanistan (and India if they can reach it).

Though, the wish to escape was probably more AS' motive. EM quite openly discusses that her motive was to help her friend (AS) to shake a morphine addiction and to recuperate from bouts of depression - descriptions of both are described quite vividly and (as far as I can tell) earnestly in The Cruel Way.

Maillart's book (The Cruel Way) was published in 1947 (five years after AS' death), and on request of AS' family, Maillart disguised AS as the character Christina.

Schwarzenbach's account Alle Wege Sind Offen was published in 2008, though some of her articles were published during the trip. 

This is a collection of short stories that were written around a common theme: people venturing to new lands, mostly the Middle East - being as an adventure, for work, or in exile - and the disillusion and heartbreak that this may bring with it.

As you can see from the star rating, this collection completely threw me.

I don't know what I expected but what I got was one story after another of precise snap shots of life. AS was a photojournalist and in this collection she seems to have pointed the camera at scenes she encountered and stories she heard and then etched the shot in words rather than on film. It is superb.

The stories in this collection were all written in 1934/35 but because of her opposition to the German politics of the time and her affiliation with authors and artists banned in Germany, no publisher was prepared to take on the task. Not even when AS received the support by Thomas Mann. The collection remained unpublished until decades after AS' untimely death - otherwise, who knows, she could have been celebrated as Switzerland's answer to Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

Outstanding.