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Sir Richard Burton is said to have spoken 29 African, Asian and European languages, which allowed him to make the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca in disguise (for which he was circumcised), translate the Kama Sutra, and search for the source of the Nile. Ilija Trojanow's compelling fictional biography, The Collector of Worlds, depicts this complex and brilliant man. The narrative relies on the voices of guides, servants and pilgrims, woven with Burton's own, suggesting the layers of the intersecting worlds he inhabited. Trojanow's own life has mirrored that of his enigmatic subject. Born in Bulgaria in 1965, he fled to West Germany with his family when he was six. He grew up in Kenya, has lived in Capetown and now lives in Vienna. His travel books Mumbai to Mecca and Along the Ganges describe his own visits to Muslim and Hindu holy sites. Trojanow's capacity to move between, and among worlds, is reflected in his elegantly cosmopolitan fiction, moving deftly from voice to voice and landscape to landscape. Trojanow will be in conversation with Guy Somerset.
