He watched the licentious dances of Papeete, kept two families in the same small town, and knew well the yellow miasma of sweat, incense and filth of the Straits of Malacca. As a naval officer, journalist and novelist he traveled to Asia, the Middle East and the South Seas, and as a thorough Bohemian he lived out the armchair dreams of many a good French bourgeois. Loti was a master of the romantic, rebellious and original, and his life, in a time when few people had been farther than a few miles from home, became legendary. Author Blanch is also a bit of a legend herself; as she prepared this version of her 1983 edition, she was also updating her autobiography to reflect her attaining the age of 100. Distributed by Palgrave.