North of Tourism

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

As his fiction clearly shows, Stephen Henighan is a cosmopolitan figure.
Born in Germany, he was educated in Canada, the United States, Colombia,
and England. United by the theme of exile, the eight stories in North of
Tourism are populated by characters trying to cope with the business of
living in an alien culture. In the title story, a French human-rights
worker pays the price for confronting abuses in Guatemala. In “A Late
Outbreak of Democracy,” a Canadian expatriate living in England falls
in love with—and is, in turn, used by—an Indian girl. An unsettled
Toronto girl corresponds with a materialistic Eastern European monk in
the ironic “Two Pleas.” In “The Gentlewoman of Baku,” the
daughter of a U.S. ambassador is embroiled in the border war between
Armenia and Azerbaijan. “The Alliance of Tiny Kingdoms” relates the
dilemma of another diplomat-exile (from Luxembourg), who is caught in
the throes of World War I as it engulfs Serbia and Montenegro—a
fitting conclusion to a powerful collection.