"Whenever I was asked: 'Why did you go to Santiago?', I had a hard time answering. How could I explain to those who had not done it that the way has the effect - if not the virtue - to make you forget all reasons that led you to become involved in it in the first place." Each year, tens of thousands of backpackers (Christian pilgrims and many others) set out from either their front doorstep or from popular starting points across Europe, to Santiago de Compostela. Most travel by foot, others ride a bicycle, and a few of them travel as did some of their medieval counterparts, on horseback or with a donkey. In addition to those who undertake a religious pilgrimage, the majority are hikers who walk the way for non-religious reasons: travel, sport, or simply the challenge of spending weeks walking in a foreign land. Also, many consider the experience as a spiritual adventure, with a view to removing themselves from the bustle of modern life. Jean-Christophe Rufin followed this "Northern Way" to Santiago de Compostela by foot, on over eight hundred kilometers. Much less crowded than the usual pilgrimage route, this one runs along the Basque and Cantabrian coasts in Spain and through the wild mountains of Asturias and Galicia. Translated from the French by Malcolm Imrie and Martina Dervis

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is now generally recognized as one of the most original and influential thinkers of this century. In Britain and the United States in particular, he has acquired a status unlike that of any other German philosopher, as successive generations of readers find their own paths through the endlessly fruitful ambiguities of his work. The conflicts and conjunctions between Benjamin's Marxism and his messianic Judaism, between his fascination for surrealism and his explorations of the Cabbala, between the philosopher of language and the ever-observant flaneur on the streets of Berlin or Paris-all these have inspired a wealth of interpretations and critical studies. Widely acclaimed in Germany, Momme Brodersen's Walter Benjamin is the most comprehensive and illuminating biography of Benjamin ever published. Not only does Brodersen provide a fuller and more coherent account of Benjamin's nomadic career than has any previous scholar, he also demonstrates the fallacy of the popular, romanticized notion of his life as the sorrowful progression of a melancholic personality. The only real tragedy, he argues, was Benjamin's suicide at Portbou on the Franco-Spanish border in 1940. Using previously unavailable material, Brodersen pays particular attention to Benjamin's childhood in Berlin, to his conflicts with his bourgeois, Jewish family, his activities in the German Youth Movement, and the formative, irreconcilable influences of idealism, socialism and Zionism. He gives an exceptionally vivid picture of Benjamin's life during the Weimar Republic, of his success as a literary critic and his work as a translator and radio journalist, as well as of his friendships and love affairs. Finally, he follows Benjamin's harrowing journey through exile, internment and flight, and for the first time unravels the mysteries surrounding his death. At the same time, Brodersen provides a fresh and lucid presentation of Benjamin's written work, and of the extraordinary range of his ideas and enthusiasms. Thoroughly revised and expanded for this edition, and accompanied by more than a hundred photographs, this biography is an essential study of the man who himself remains an indispensable guide to the ruins and enchantments of the twentieth century.