Magic
Reviewed By Ian Banks October 4, 2018
Author Jan Golembiewski
Distributor: Transit Lounge
ISBN: 978-1-925760-07-1
Publisher: Transit Lounge
Release Date: October 2018
Website: http://transitlounge.com.au
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At a young age Jan Golembiewski set off on what he told everyone was to be a typical year of traveling the world, a gap year, where he explored foreign parts and grew up a little. He did intend to travel, but just not in the way his family expected. He had decided he would set out on a very personal journey, to discover if Magic was still truly able to be found. He took himself to Africa!
This journey which was to last for more than a year took him to places that were absolutely unexpected, found him in dangerous and almost deadly situations time and time again, before returning to his home country of Australia, a changed and far wiser man.
Set in the times before airline regulation became so strict, tickets could be sold on the open market, changed at will for other flights, and Golembieski made the most of this to find his a way about the world. Becoming mixed up in the dangerous world of drugs he meets a wide and florid range of people, some who helped and some who were after what they could take.
He never, ever lost sight of the fact that he was after the “Magic”; his drug induced psychosis enlarged this belief to the point where he began to consider he was a Prophet and Africa was his spiritual homeland; a belief that was to see him place his faith in God; that God would provide, an aspect that was to once again see him in serious issue in the world of Islam.
His absolute conviction that he was doing the right thing presented him with a challenge he must accomplish: to cross the Sahara barefooted with nothing other than faith to provide. His argument was that the Sahara has boarders to other countries and he was challenging the right to travel freely throughout the country, no boarders, no restrictions; a situation which saw him in serious trouble time and time again.
As the pages turn the slow and convoluted journey of a man finding pure faith, miracles that add up to Magic and learning to find love and kindness in the most unexpected of places, offset by cruelty and victimisation in others makes a riveting and challenging read.
Confrontational, deep, raw and dark in parts, the work will make you reassess everything that you think you knew and understood about life, religion, faith and belief. It hits the nerve we all call arrogance when we firmly believe what we know and believe is the only way and the only aspect of life and living.