The City at Three P.M.

In The City at Three PM, award-winning fiction writer Peter LaSalle offers 11 startlingly original personal essays dealing with his longtime quest for world travel of the literary sort.

The range of offbeat experiences is wide-from driving recklessly across the county when young to seek out Saul Bellow in Chicago, to settling in for long evenings at a pub in Dublin with Christy Brown, the celebrated Irish author afflicted with cerebral palsy who typed with his toes and was the subject of the movie My Left Foot.

In Buenos Aires LaSalle senses metaphysical transport while investigating Borges's work; in Cameroon he attends the wonderful opening of a small bookstore; in Hollywood he finds himself caught in a crazy mob scene while researching the work of 1930s master novelist and screenwriter Nathanael West; in Tunisia he follows in the footsteps of Flaubert at the ruins of ancient Carthage. And those are just some of the adventures.

Having first appeared in distinguished publications here and abroad, including The Best American Travel Writing, these are beautifully crafted pieces-heartfelt, honest, observant-that conjure up those fine moments when travel does intersect with the important role of literature in our lives.