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Description of  The Outsider: The Life and Work of Lafcadio Hearn: The Man Who Introduced Voodoo, Creole Cooking and Japanese Ghosts to the World

Step into the extraordinary life of the man who made an impact as an observer wherever he lived, and went on to become the leading western interpreter of Japan and Japanese culture a position he still occupies today. Born in Greece and abandoned as a child, Lafcadio Hearn lived the life of an exile. He travelled the world and became a famous writer but always felt like an outsider in Dublin, London, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and French-speaking Martinique. To him, none of these places felt like home. Hearn's life in America was punctuated by a string of successes and failures. In Cincinnati he became the city's best-known crime reporter but was fired after marrying a black woman. Devastated, he moved to New Orleans, where he championed French Creole and Caribbean culture and created the city's image as a place of voodoo and debauchery (the image which many Americans still hold today). Hearn arrived in Japan at a time of historic change. Sent there as a correspondent, he soon found himself alone and jobless. He settled in the remote town of Matsue, firmly believing that Japan would provide him with an endless supply of rich writing material perhaps enough to last a lifetime. Over the next dozen years, Hearn published 15 books which were lauded by the likes of Mark Twain, William Butler Yeats, Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. Hearn's books made him famous as the leading writer on Japan and Japanese culture. Read more