Synopses & Reviews
Granta has long been known for the quality of its travel writing. The 1980s were the
culmination of a golden age, when writers including Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin, James Hamilton-Paterson and James Fenton set out to document life in largely unfamiliar territory, bringing back tales of the beautiful, the extraordinary and the unexpected. By the mid 1990s, travel writing seemed to change, as a younger generation of writeres that appeared in the magazine made journeys for more complex and often personal reasons. Decca Aitkenhead reported on sex tourism in Thailand, and Wendell Steavenson moved to Iraq as foreign correspondent. What all these pieces have in common is a sense of engagement with the places they describe, and a belief that whether we are in Birmingham or Belarus, there is always something new to be discovered.
About the Author
LIZ JOBEY was the Deputy Editor of Granta 1998-2002 and before that was Editor of the Independent on Sunday Review and Literary Editor of the Guardian. She is the editor of Are We Related?: The New Granta Book of the Family and currently works as a freelance journalist.
JONATHAN RABAN'S writing has won many prizes including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heinemann Award, and the Thomas Cook Award. He is the author, most recently, of Driving Home: An American Scrapbook (2010).
Table of Contents
Introduction by Jonathan Raban
Arrival by Albino Ochero-Okello
Congo Dinosaur by Redmond O'Hanlon
The Road to Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin
Mississippi Water by Jonathan Raban
The Life and Death of a Homosexual by Pierre Clastres
How It Ends by Andrew O'Hagan
Siberia by Colin Thubron
Serampur by Ian Jack
Going Abroad by W.G. Sebald
The Lazy River by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Lovely Girls, Very Cheap by Decca Aitkenhead
Dervishes by Rory Stewart
Trespassing by Paul Theroux
When I Was Lost by James Hamilton-Paterson
Captain Scott's Biscuit by Thomas Keneally
This is Centerville by James Buchan
Osama's War by Wendell Steavenson
Airds Moss by Kathleen Jamie
Sri Lanka: December 28, 2004 by John Borneman
Nightwalking by Robert Macfarlane
The Paris Intifada by Andrew Hussey
Kashmir's Forever War by Basharat Peer
Arctic by Lavinia Greenlaw