MORTIMER OF THE MAGHREB

Known primarily for his travel writing and poetry (Savage Pilgrims, 1997, etc.), Shukman here offers three stories and a novella tracking the rueful meanderings of hapless Western travelers.

“Mortimer of the Maghreb” was once the nom de guerre of aging Brit Charles Mortimer, who enjoyed a sensational career as a far-flung journalist but who now, at age 56, finds his reputation faltering. Encamped with the insurgents in a dubious civil war on the Moroccan border, he no longer has the stomach for conflict. The novella shows Charles filling his notebook with self-pitying reflections to ex-wife Saskia and staggering around the desert in a “daze of remorse” for former lover Celeste, a French photographer with whom he shared his finest moments. Shukman’s characters are eaten up and spit out. They are citizens of the world: “a global man, highly trained [who] long ago severed the ties that bind” is how Harry Burton, for example, is described in “Castaway,” which follows his wanderings while the privileged, solitary traveler is stuck on the island of Inagua. “Darien Dogs” calls rich securities banker Jim Rogers “a modern-day hunter-gatherer”; arriving in Panama to secure the construction of a new oil pipeline, he gradually succumbs to the snares of a fetching local prostitute. In “Old Providence,” hubris loses famed British painter Rothman Case the love of his life. Awash in drink by middle age, he recognizes that the moment of bottoming out also affords him his first glimpse of artistic freedom.

A skillfully crafted, eclectic collection.