Description

‘An artist in both line and words. . . with talents of gold’ OBSERVER

‘There is a way of traveling cheaply in France. One simply gets on a train, sits down in a first-class compartment and falls asleep’

When Ludwig Bemelmans encounters the dashing yet penniless Comte de St. Cucuface aboard a Paris train, he is swept into a deliciously absurd adventure through 1950s France. Under the Count’s mischievous tutelage, Bemelmans assumes the role of a German prince, hoodwinking strangers with impeccable manners and effortless charm.

Together, the unlikely duo embark on a run of outlandish escapades, living lavishly on nothing at all. They dine in grand hotels, commandeer Rolls-Royces, outwit restaurateurs and enchant American millionaires with fantastical tales of their aristocratic pasts.

Brimming with quick wit and enlivened by charming illustrations, How to Travel Incognito captures a France suspended between fading elegance and the glitter of the new. Fictionalising Bemelmans’s own improbable exploits, it’s a reminder that the best journeys let us become someone else entirely.

‘An excellent storyteller’ THE TIMES

‘Bemelmans is always funny, insightful and dead on target’ ANTHONY BOURDAIN

‘A recommended purchase for adults, their children and possibly their children’s children’ NEW YORK TIMES

Publisher Review

An artist in both line and words. . . with talents of gold * Observer * A picaresque fantasy about life in modern France. It is the tale of Bemelmans, the reasonably fly left-bank American, being shown by an improbable impoverished aristocrat how to make flyness into something spectacular, not only as a way of living, but as a way of life * Spectator * An excellent storyteller * Sunday Times * A man of wit, taste and talent, Ludwig Bemelmans has earned a grateful public. . . [a] recommended purchase for adults, their children and possibly their children’s children * New York Times * Bemelmans is always funny, insightful and dead on target. No one has ever surpassed the master — Anthony Bourdain I know of no other writing that pleases the mental palate as pungently, swiftly and freshly as does Mr Bemelmans — Elizabeth Bowen * Tatler * Under the guise of an alias as Prince of Bavaria, Bemelmans travels de luxe with an authentic, down-at-heels nobleman as guide and arbiter. . . a series of madcap adventures’ * Kirkus Reviews * The singularity of Bemelmans, whether he draws or writes, is his double capacity to see freshly like a child and comment shrewdly like a grown-up. The product is an awry wisdom, the wisdom of a reflective innocent who is surprised at nothing and delighted with everything — Clifton Fadiman