This week’s book is A Fortune Teller Told Me by Italian author, Tiziano Terzani. Terzani was, for decades, the Asian correspondent for Der Spiegel, the acclaimed German newspaper. He has written articles about some of Asia’s most memorable historic events of the 20th century and has been arrested and thrown out of more than one country for various reasons. In China’s case, it was memorably for being a “counter-revolutionary”. But this book is not about historic events or even about travel with a journalistic slant. Instead, it’s about divination and the results of paying attention to what a fortune-teller has to say.
Being a travel correspondent means travelling a lot. And Terzani, like most folks who travel a lot, clocked many thousands of kilometres on planes of various sizes. But when he was told by an old Chinese fortune-teller on the streets of Hong Kong that he shouldn’t fly at all during the entire year of 1993, he made a decision to actually follow that advice, despite his inherent scepticism. This book is essentially an account of that year—a year spent travelling through Asia by train, car, and boat. Everywhere he goes, he delves deeper into fortune telling in general, visiting a staggering number of fortune-tellers, soothsayers, shaman, monks, astrologers, and so on, each having their own style and methodology. He’s not a believer, but he has an open mind, and it all makes for interesting reading.
Terzani’s skill at spinning a yarn is remarkable. He writes simply, but with style and poise, baring his innermost for the pages. It’s easy to read and at the same time, intriguing and beguiling. I found this book by chance—plucked from a shelf in a used book shop, quite possibly in a random town while travelling—and I didn’t spend much time investigating it before buying it. I wasn’t disappointed by its contents. A Fortune Teller Told Me is a quirky book about fate, the future, and how events shape people’s lives. It’s also an engaging travelogue through a part of the world that is in many ways a deeply superstitious region. It’s a book that is written beautifully and reads like a strange dream.
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