Within a Sky Full of Earth

conundrum • noun
1 the conundrums facing policy-makers PROBLEM, difficult question, difficulty, quandary, dilemma; informal poser.
2 Rod enjoyed conundrums and crosswords RIDLLE, puzzle, word game; informal brainteaser.

The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man’s man.
Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman.
Conundrum, one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.

«Certainly the best first-hand account ever written by a traveler across the boundaries of sex. That journey is perhaps the ultimate adventure for a human being, but although it has been the subject of myth and speculation since ancient times, it is an authentically modern experience.... Morris can offer no real answer to the central mystery; neither she nor the scientists of this era can explain with any certainty why a transsexual's mind and body are at odds with each other. What Jan Morris does offer, through her life and her work, is a window on the wondrous possibilities of humankind.» [Newsweek]

This is a title from the extraordinary New York Review of Books publisher, among many things they have just those books we want to read. Includind Jean Genet, Stefan Zweig, Bioy Casares, Cesar Pavese, Turgenev, Moravia and many others. From our first chapter at Bloom the NYRB Magazine were mark down on our plans. For one reason or another it didn't came to our store as it should. It will now along with a great set of amazing friends. Prepare yourself for this grand delivery.

Conundrum, by Jan Morris • New York Review of Books • 192 pages • 2006 • ISBN: 1590171896