Books in the Netherlandic and Belgian Literature series

In Self-Portrait Abroad, our narrator-a Belgian author much like Toussaint himself-travels the globe, finding the mundane blended everywhere with the exotic: With his usual poker face, he keeps up on Corsican gossip in Tokyo and has a battle of nerves in a butcher shop in Berlin; he wins a boules tournament in Cap Corse, takes in a strip club in Japan's historic Nara, gets pulled through Hanoi on a cycle rickshaw, and has a chance encounter on the road from Tunis to Sfax. Tales of a cosmopolitan at home in a strangely familiar world, Self-Portrait Abroad casts the entire globe in a cool but playful light, reminding us that, wherever we go, we take our own eyes with us...

In this collection of thematically related stories, celebrated Belgian author Francois Emmanuel shows his indebtedness to the great poetic iconoclasts of the French language not least Charles Baudelaire, after whose famous poem this book was named.