About the book
This is the work of a flaneur, of a tourist and a traveller, of someone who wanders the earth with the motto ‘a walking dog finds bones’. In the Ukrainian steppe, Tommy Wieringa is dubbed an honorary Cossack by a drunken Cossack, in Vienna he goes in search of an illustrious doppelganger and in St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai he becomes the false bride of Christ. He is a hotel-dweller who writes with relish about wretched accommodation and restaurateurs who hate their clientele. No destination is so miserable that a story cannot be found in it.
Wieringa’s earlier travel stories were praised as ‘delightful anecdotes, important and chance meetings, taking us to places we’ll never go, with a gift for observation that lends everything a deeply human feel. Travel as adventure, open-minded, receptive to the unexpected. That is the effect a born writer can have on us.’ That flag is now flying proudly above Honorary Cossack.