James Kirkup

In this fifth volume of autobiography, James Kirkup escapes England when his love affair with a young man comes to an end. His invitation to teach English literature in Japan is the start of 'a long and passionate love/hate affair' with that country. He soon explores the gay bars and movie-houses, alert for pick-ups, and struggles with the massacre of English by the Japanese. After two years of intense loneliness in Sendai, however, he feels impelled to leave. For a time he stays in Vienna, of which he offers us brilliant and idiosyncratic impressions. Then, after a spell of teaching in Malaysia, he returns to Japan to take up a post at the Japan Women's University. All the while he is writingtravel books, translations, textbooks, novels and poetry. Me All Over affords encounters with and insights into various well-known writers, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Stephen Spender, Ronald Bottrall, Raymond Mortimer, E.M. Forster, Bernard Spencer, D.J. Enright, Francis King and Bertrand Russell. The letters from his friend Joe Ackerley, amusing and intimate, are especially revealing; and Joe's sister Nancy is one of a select band whose devotion to Jim the outsider is unwavering.

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