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On the Narrow Road to the Deep North by Lesley Downer - FREE

In 1689 Matsuo Basho, Japan’s greatest poet, set out on his last and longest journey, to the remote northern provinces.

His moving account, rich in strange and sometimes comic encounters along the road, is the most famous and much loved work in Japanese literature.

Three hundred years later, inspired by Basho’s writing and her passion for Japan, Lesley Downer set off in his footsteps.

Walking and hitchhiking towards the Sacred Mountains with their legendary hermit priests, meeting people who had never seen a Westerner and dining on flowers and sautéed grasshoppers, she discovered — a world which many Japanese believe vanished centuries ago.