From the bestselling author of The Art of Travel comes a wittily intriguing exploration of the strange "non-place" that he believes is the imaginative center of our civilization.

Given unprecedented access to one of the world’s busiest airports as a “writer-in-residence,” Alain de Botton found it to be a showcase for many of the major crosscurrents of the modern world—from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our global interconnectedness to our romanticizing of the exotic. He met travelers from all over and spoke with everyone from baggage handlers to pilots to the airport chaplain. Weaving together these conversations and his own observations—of everything from the poetry of room service menus to the eerie silence in the middle of the runway at midnight—de Botton has produced an extraordinary meditation on a place that most of us never slow down enough to see clearly. Lavishly illustrated in color by renowned photographer Richard Baker, A Week at the Airport reveals the airport in all its turbulence and soullessness and—yes—even beauty.

阿蘭·德波頓1969年生於瑞士，12歲時全傢人移居倫敦。18歲入劍橋大學。他徜徉於文學、藝術、美學、哲學、心理分析之間，上下古今求索，從中邂逅知音，産生共鳴，在跨越韆年的著作傢那裏欣然找到先得我心之感，逐步接近瞭自己的目標。大學隻不過提供他一個讀書的氛圍；而讀書隻是幫他找到自己獨特的創作模式。所以，他不願把他的寫作歸入任何一類：小說、曆史、哲學……最多能稱之為“隨筆”，以個人的聲音談人生的重大題材。

德波頓在各種報刊雜誌發錶的文章很多，23歲開始齣版第一部作品。但他寫小說力求打破講故事和錶現情景的傳統模式，希望探索的是情景背後的所以然，要弄明白各種人際關係後麵的動力是什麼。他最喜愛的、能引起共鳴的作傢之一是普魯斯特。他的第四部著作：《擁抱逝水年華》是從文學通嚮哲學的橋梁，這本書使他名聲大噪。由此引齣下一部：《哲學的慰籍》。如果說他的小說是寓哲學探索於文學創作之中；那麼在這本書則是用文學筆法寫哲學。他以自己駕馭文字的纔華把通常是枯燥晦澀的哲學思想寫得生動活潑而通俗易懂，目的就是要把哲學從高頭講章拉下來，進入平常百姓的日常生活之中，迄今為止，德波頓纔華之旅的最後一站是《旅行的藝術》，讀萬捲書不如行萬裏路，何況你的導遊是德波頓。全世界的人都在翹首期待這位當代英倫第一纔子何時踏上新的旅程，又會是何等新奇的經曆。