The Time Traveller
Fascinated by Jules Verne’s world-famous adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Dröge decided at a very young age to undertake that nineteenth-century ‘journey through time’ himself. As we know, the protagonist completes his journey within the promised eighty days because by travelling eastwards he gains time.
Marianne Schönbach
Philip Dröge fulfils that childhood ambition in his latest book, The Time Travveller. In doing so, he follows the enchanting wanderlust that was also characteristic of his earlier works: The Shadow of Tambora , about a volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies in 1815, Moresnet, about a forgotten country and Mother City. . . This time, however, his journey not only reveals exhilarating stories from all corners of the globe, but also serves a more philosophical purpose: an attempt to grasp the elusive reality of the mysterious concept we call time. Why is it almost nowhere in Europe truly noon when the clock strikes twelve? Was time travel invented in India? Does time even exist?
Dröge’s globetrotting takes him from a small Swedish island to the Greek coast and from an Indian temple to the Aboriginals in Australia. Each destination on his journey around the world prompts him to reflect on aspects of our perception of time and to discover how we measure and experience it. Ultimately Dröge reaches the International Date Line, the place where ‘today’ becomes ‘yesterday’ and nobody knows exactly what time it is. The Time Traveller is wonderfully cheerful, curious, informative and profound.. An exceptionally entertaining book in every respect. Yet despite his best efforts, Dröge doesn’t manage to find out what time really is. It remains an abstraction, a mystery.
Philip Dröge goes back to the future and discovers his inner time traveller. [...] Dröge approaches time in terms of physics, metaphysics and philosophy. De tijdreiziger is almost bursting at the seams with surprising facts, entertaining anecdotes and intriguing reflections.
NRC
The Time Traveler is an original, informative, and captivating book that shows just how much time is a cultural and human concept. It's worth taking the time to read it.
de Boekenkrant