Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya

Best known for fearless novels and essays on colonial legacies and social classes, West Indies-born Jamaica Kincaid was rumored to be a contender for the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Thus, a travel memoir on Himalayan flora might seem an odd fit, but Kincaid has long loved the outdoors, especially gardening, geology, and classic stories of mountaineering. Among Flowers is her account of venturing to Nepal’s Kanchenjunga with a botanist friend on a seed-gathering trek, and her descriptions of night skies and thirty-foot rhododendrons evoke wonder and awe, like all good odyssey tales. Yet she also writes honestly, at times disruptively, about the trials and tribulations of knee pain and rustic latrines, as well as on the serious threats of Maoist rebels. As a narrator, Kincaid is often overwhelmed and oh so real, forgoing the well-trodden path of grandiose expedition writing. Among Flowers is an immersive journey into the essence of travel itself through the eyes of one of America’s finest cultural observers.