Showing Whereabouts: Notes on Being a Foreigner by Alastair Reid

Scotland, the United States, France, Spain, Greece, Switzerland, Central and South America provide the varied settings for these pieces. In prose that has become a celebrated contribution to the New Yorker, Alastair Reid develops his life of travel as resident of the world into a metaphor for literary exploration. Reid is truly cosmopolitan. Though his birthplace was Scotland, affectionately described in two of the pieces, his exile, precipitated by World War II has created in him a unique perspective.