By a mere chance did I stumble upon a very interesting book. It is written by Syed Manzurul Islam and called The Ethics of Travel. From Marco Pollo to Kafka. (Link to Amazon.)

It is amazing how things sometimes converge unexpectedly. While my primary subject of study is postmodern philosophy, the advent of electronic mediation (no mass media, please) and aspects of living in all this mess, my (secondary) target of interest is the religion of Islam (strictly academic, no flame).

I have been wondering for some time, how to conjoin these two fields that seem not to carry an implicit correlation. Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (update: English original here) looked like a good start, though his work is of course confined to the era of 1920’s and 1930’s.

The Ethics of Travel have it both: postmodern philosophy in the subject (quoting mainly from Deleuze and others) and Islam in author’s name. (Well, not that it really mattered, but hey, nice coincidence!) There are even references to my favourite writer, Rushdie, and to Lévinas – at the right spots, just where the names struck my mind while reading.

As soon as I finish an urgent work, I’ll start the translation. The English here is quite exceptional and challenging (just as English of Indian/Pakistani immigrants usually is).

I should also add that I was able to acquire this book thanks to a swift intercontinental cooperation of Blake of the Montana Book Company. Since Amazon blatantly ignores our recent EU accession and disallows Payments from our country, why not contact the used books sellers directly (the book being kind of rare). A nice workaround.