Nicholas Bouvier was an exquisite traveller and the greatest Swiss travel writer of the 20th century. Without waiting for the result of his degree, in 1953 he left for Yoguslavia with no intention of returning. The fruits of this journey of a year and a half, were published some eight years later, as The Way of the World. Bouvier continued, through India to Ceylon and thence to Japan. From his experience in Japan, where he was to live for more than a year and to revisit in the 1960s and 1970s, cam a distillation of experiences, The Japanese Chronicles, which were published in their final version in 1975.