Long Road, Hard Lessons
Description
Aged 50, Mark Swain left his slippers by the fire and set off with his 18yr old son on a cycle expedition from Ireland to Japan. "We'll train on the way," he said. Physical challenges, border bureaucracy, health scares and traffic hazards were all anticipated. What they underestimated was the conflict they faced, spending 24hrs a day together under such arduous conditions.
On one level, a life-changing travel adventure, this book also takes time to look at the psychological journey made by parents and children. The accounts of the son's attempts to break away from his father, to find his own individual place in the world are moving and insightful. Yet at every turn, these thoughts are lightened by humour and juxtaposed with vivid descriptions of the countries and people they encounter along their way. We witness how conflict teaches us things that we did not expect to learn, and how much the parent can learn from the child
More details
Other editions
Previous edition
Persons
Mark Swain was born in Singapore in 1958, where his father was stationed in the RAF. He has lived in many countries, and as a young man found it hard to break the habit of a nomadic life.
With a low boredom threshold, Mark has had dozens of jobs and several careers. This provides him with endless source material for short stories and is probably the prime reason for the sense of authenticity people see in his work.
Studying Graphic Design at Hastings College of Art at 16, he ran off and joined the Army in search of adventure. Later he found himself travelling the world on the QE2 as a silver-service waiter and going to the Falklands war. Training as a TEFL teacher took him to Tokyo in 1984, where he met his wife Lorna. In 2008 Mark took a year out from a career in Risk Management to cycle 10,000miles from Ireland to Japan with his son. This life-changing decision resulted in them writing Long Road Hard Lessons, which became an Amazon bestseller.
Mark and his wife Lorna have three grown-up children and live in Canterbury, Kent. There is not much in his life that he does without passion, although he will do anything to avoid having to dance or empty a kitchen bin. Asked about his ambitions, desires, or his sense of right and wrong, he says, "I trust in instinct. I simply grow towards the light."
Mark particularly enjoys the Short Story form, admiring American short story writers such as Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan and Richard Ford as well as classic short story writers Franz Kafka and Anton Chekov. He is also a great admirer of George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Norman Maclean, Albert Camus and the contemporary travel writer Jonathan Raban.
Two collections of Mark's own short stories - including the award winning story 'Special Treatment' - have been released by his UK publisher, Tinderbox Publishing Ltd along with the bestselling "Long Road, Hard Lessons" a non-fiction book with photographs and maps about a 10,000-mile life-changing cycle journey he made with his teenage son from Ireland to Japan.
Mark is at home in England, but is constantly drawn back to Asia, Morocco, and to Dingle in Ireland.
