Les Trois Hommes En Allemagne

The sequel to Three Men in a Boat finds our three friends abandoning the Thames for bicycles and heading into Germany for a cycling tour of the Black Forest. Harris, George, and the narrator approach continental travel with the same bewildered optimism that previously brought them to the river, immediately discovering that foreign parts offer an entirely fresh repertoire of disasters. George's quest to buy his aunt a cushion becomes an epic misunderstanding, Harris develops an irrational terror of road-watering machines, and the trio's grasp of German directions proves approximately zero. They cycle endlessly toward horizons that seem to recede forever, their map increasingly a work of fiction and their plans dissolving into delightful chaos. Jerome writes with the tender absurdity of someone who knows his characters are glorious fools and loves them for it. This is travel literature as it used to exist, before guidebooks got efficient, when getting spectacularly lost was half the point. For readers who believe the journey matters more than the destination, and that the best company is the kind that drives you slightly mad.