I don’t usually read travel literature. In fact, I’m not crazy about travel at all. Evidence of my travels rarely appears on my instagram profile and I can’t say that the sentence “I love to travel” has ever appeared on any of my online dating profiles. Which is why it is doubly strange that I should choose to read Hav, a 1985 fictional travelogue by Jan Morris originally published as Last Letters From Hav.
I’m assuming that being locked down to a 5 kilometre radius of my house with the recent plague sweeping the globe has made travel seem much more attractive, at least subconsciously.
Part allegory, part magic realism fantasy, part science fiction, part travelogue, entirely Hav. The book details the fictional city of Hav, somewhere in the misty fog of Eastern Europe. Caught between ever shifting borders and ethnic majorities, Hav inhabits the same pages of the atlas where Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel are found. Shapeless, formless, timeless.
My favourite books growing up were always fantasy novels, and in particular I always savoured the opening pages of each book, where the author would painstakingly draw a map of the fantasy world they’d created. Dwarvish cities nestled in snowy mountain ranges, dark and foreboding Elven forests for the protagonist to get lost in. Seeing these made up cities and villages dotted across the map was always satisfying. Which of these cities would the hero visit? What would he encounter along the way? If the hero didn’t visit a marked town, it was almost more exciting. It meant there was an entire world out there, happening right outside the lines and paragraphs of the story, just waiting for a sequel, waiting for another adventure.
In the same way, Morris constructs a fictional region and world for readers to get lost in. She crafts an entire history for the city from the ground up. She details the Crusades against the city in the 12th Century, several conquests and colonisations, visits from Coco Chanel and Hitler on holiday jaunts throughout the years told with a matter-of-fact trivia tone. Hav is as real and tangible as any city you will ever read about. While Morris has clearly placed her city of Hav somewhere lingering on the edges of the Mediterranean Sea on our planet, the same fantasy and endless possibility that permeate Middle Earth or Midkemia also seize Hav. It is world-building that would be the envy of any high fantasy writer.
But Hav is not a story, at least in any traditional narrative sense. Morris intersperses monthly diary entries with wordy jaunts through history and topography and ethnography. Descriptions of buildings in the city that do not and have never existed drag on for several pages. Catalogues of the city’s various religious sects or the anatomy of it’s bureaucratic structure are often dry and dull. If it were a real guide book for a city, you would almost certainly skip ahead. But herein lies the charm of Morris’ writing. The city of Hav is treated with a realism and gravity that few other writers could pull off, showcasing both the sublime and the incredibly dull. It is not a simple page turning narrative. It is a painting that you drink in.
This is not to say fantastic elements do not run deep. Morris is our narrator and guide through the city and conveniently speaks many tongues. She has no issue communicating across a multitude of ethnic groups and everyone seems to love her and welcome her, from Greek families at San Spiridon to the cave dwelling Kretevs on the escarpment. She is always in a position to meet the most interesting and powerful people, or perhaps she just makes them seem that way. The vagaries of reality do not and should not apply in this case.
And like most good travel writers, Jan Morris is anonymous. I could tell you very little about her personality or her quirks. Likes and dislikes are regulated to the mundane, the everyday, the relatable. Tastes and smells are described without being judged and beauty is objectified. Thanks to Morris I know that the morning markets at Hav are chaotic, that fishermen will sell you eel and sea urchin right on the quay. I know that Hav’s Chinatown equivalent of Yuan Wen Kuo is actually quite similar to Chinatown in Sydney or Vancouver and that the annual Roof-Race is one of the premier community events on the Havian calendar. But I can tell you nothing of the person describing these things to me.
The more I read, the more I became intensely interested in Jan Morris. Virtually no back story of her life is given, nor is her reason for being in Hav detailed in any satisfactory manner. No past anecdotes, nothing. I looked into her background, seeing the guidebooks she wrote about very real locations like Sydney and Venice. Then I read that Jan began her life as James until 1972, when she had gender reassignment after transitioning from male to female.
I do not want to assume any motive on Jan Morris’ part other than to write a good book. But the nature of Hav, of this place that does not and has never existed seems to reflect a fantasy that could not be found in many cities in the 20th Century. She is referred to on first meeting by all Havian men as ‘dirleddy’ (dear lady). A powerful Caliph offers his vizier as a husband to Jan. She is treated like a daughter by her Italian landlord Signora Vattani. Jan Morris, a transexual woman, is welcomed by all as a friend and an ally.
Despite all the fantastic smells, sights, sounds of this lost city, it would seem the true fantasies of Hav reflect the author’s fantasies of place and belonging. It is a reductive and maybe even a trite analysis that ignores the wonderful work Morris does in covertly reflecting 20th Century European life. But it is certainly the thing that has stuck with me upon finishing the book, and what will continue to fill my mind during inevitable rereads.
The novel ends quickly and without much warning, warships on the horizon signalling the end of life as Havian citizens know it. I was disappointed that Morris did not at least try to communicate some sense of foreboding in the preceding chapters, but again, she plays her role as a singular travel writer with incredible discipline and tact. Why would a travel writer have any idea about geopolitical activity? It is a restraint and dedication to the concept of Hav as a text that very few would share.
She would return to the world of Hav 20 years later, providing an again fictional account of the city in 2005. But I believe the original 1985 work stands on it’s own merit as a masterclass of world-building and a must-read for fantasy writers, lovers of travel and bored pandemic prisoners.