Ilija Trojanow Der Weltensammler (The Collector of Worlds) March 2006, 473 pp ISBN: 344 6206523 Ilija Trojanow, himself a seasoned explorer, and well-known student of different cultures and corners of the world, presents us in this book, a biography in novelised form, with the story of a kindred spirit - the Victorian explorer, scholar, linguist, sometime diplomat and, by some accounts, an occasional spy, Richard Burton, author, among other works, of The Perfumed Garden, the Kama Sutra and an unexpurgated edition of the Arabian Nights. The book, which won the coveted Leipzig Book Prize earlier this year, concentrates on three periods in Burton's life: those of army officer in India, pilgrim to Medina and Mecca, and Speke's companion on his expedition to Lake Tanganyika. The narrative, told mainly from Burton's perspective, also includes contributions, real or fictitious, from natives of the region, a device which further illustrates Burton's character by showing him as he appeared to others. The result is a vivid portrait of one of the most eccentric and brilliant figures of the nineteenth century, whose bold exploration into the then little known Arabic and Islamic world confront the reader with a very up-to-date question: What does it mean to be a foreigner? So, a novel of exploration but also of ideas.