Granta 157: Should We Have Stayed at Home?

Author: William Atkins
Publisher: Granta
ISBN: 190988944X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
From Antarctica and the deserts of the US-Mexico border, to a Siberian whale-killing station and the alleyways of Taipei, these dispatches describe a world in perpetual motion (even when it is 'locked-down'). To travel, we are reminded, is to embrace the experience of being a stranger - to acknowledge that one person''s frontier is another's home. Granta 157 is guest-edited by award-winning travel writer William Atkins. It features: Jason Allen-Paisant remembers the trees of his childhood Jamaica from his home in Leeds Carlos Manuel lvarez navigates Cuba's customs system, translated by Frank Wynne Eliane Brum travels from her home in the Brazilian Amazon to Antarctica in the era of climate crisis, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty Francisco Cant and Javier Zamora: a former border guard travels to the US-Mexico border with a former undocumented migrant who crossed the border as a child Jennifer Croft's richly illustrated essay on postcards and graffiti, inspired by Los Angeles Bathsheba Demuth visits a whale-hunting station on the Bering Strait, Russia Sinad Gleeson visits Brazil with Clarice Lispector Kate Harris with the Tlingit people of the Taku River basin, on the border of British Columbia and Alaska Artist Roni Horn on Iceland Emmanuel Iduma returns to Lagos in his late father's footsteps, Nigeria Kapka Kassabova among the gatherers of the ancient Mesta River, Bulgaria Taran Khan with Afghan migrants in Germany and Kabul Jessica J. Lee in the alleyways of Taipei, Taiwan, in search of her mother's home Ben Mauk among the volcanoes of Duterte's Philippines Pascale Petit tracks tigers in Paris and India Photographer James Tylor on the legacy of whaling in Indigenous South Australia, introduced by Dominic Guerrera

The New Granta Book of Travel

Author: Albino Ochero-Okello
Publisher: Granta Publications
ISBN: 184708446X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
A collection of travel writing by some of the genre’s finest authors, from Paul Theroux to Sara Wheeler, voyaging from Mississippi to Malawi and Thailand. The New Granta Book of Travel Writing represents a sea change in writers’ approaches to the craft. The 1980s were the culmination of a golden age, when writers including 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 writers appeared in the magazine, making journeys for more complex and often personal reasons. Decca Aitkenhead reported on sex tourism in Thailand, and Wendell Steavenson moved to Iraq as a 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.

The Granta Book of the African Short Story

Author: Helon Habila
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1847084389
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
Presenting a diverse and dazzling collection from all over the continent, from Morocco to Zimbabwe, Uganda to Kenya. Helon Habila focuses on younger, newer writers - contrasted with some of their older, more established peers - to give a fascinating picture of a new and more liberated Africa. These writers are characterized by their engagement with the wider world and the opportunities offered by the end of apartheid, the end of civil wars and dictatorships, and the possibilities of free movement. Their work is inspired by travel and exile. They are liberated, global and expansive. As Dambudzo Marechera wrote: 'If you're a writer for a specific nation or specific race, then f*** you." These are the stories of a new Africa, punchy, self-confident and defiant. Includes stories by: Fatou Diome; Aminatta Forna; Manuel Rui; Patrice Nganang; Leila Aboulela; Zo Wicomb; Alaa Al Aswany; Doreen Baingana; E.C. Osondu.

Looking for Transwonderland

Author: Noo Saro-Wiwa
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 159376491X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
A “remarkable chronicle” of a journey back to this West African nation after years of exile (The New York Times Book Review). Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to visit her father in Nigeria—a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. After her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed there, she didn’t return for several years. Then she decided to come to terms with the country her father given his life for. Traveling from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the decrepit kitsch of the Transwonderland Amusement Park, she explores Nigerian Christianity, delves into the country’s history of slavery, examines the corrupting effect of oil, and ponders the huge success of Nollywood. She finds the country as exasperating as ever, and frequently despairs at the corruption and inefficiency she encounters. But she also discovers that it is far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, with its captivating thick tropical rain forest and ancient palaces and monuments—and most engagingly and entertainingly, its unforgettable people. “The author allows her love-hate relationship with Nigeria to flavor this thoughtful travel journal, lending it irony, wit and frankness.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Granta Book of Reportage

Author: Ian Jack
Publisher: Granta Anthologies
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
Since its relaunch in 1979, Granta magazine has championed the art and craft of reportage - journalism marked by vivid description, a novelist's eye to form and eyewitness reporting that reveals hidden truths about people and events that have shaped the world we know. This new edition of The Granta Book of Reportage collects a dozen of the finest and most lasting pieces Granta has published. Featuring distinguished writers and reporters - John Simpson, James Fenton, Martha Gellhorn, Germaine Greer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, John le Carre, as well as new talents Elana Lappin, Suketu Mehta and Wendell Steavenson - the book covers some of the signal events of our time: the fall of Saigon, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq.

Granta 124

Author: John Freeman
Publisher: Granta
ISBN: 1905881703
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Policeman-turned-detective-turned-writer A Yi describes life as a provincial gumshoe in China. Physician Siddhartha Mukherjee visits a government hospital in New Delhi, where he meets Madha Sengupta, at the end of his life and on the frontiers of medicine. Robert Macfarlane explores the limestone underworld beneath the Peak District. And Haruki Murakami revisits his walk to Kobe in the aftermath of the 1995 earthquake. In this issue - which includes poems by Charles Simic and Ellen Bryant Voigt, a story by Miroslav Penkov and non-fiction by David Searcy, Teju Cole and Hector Abad - Granta presents a panoramic view of our shared landscape and investigates our motivations for exploring it. '

The Granta Book of India

Author: Ian Jack
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
The Granta Book of India brings together, for the first time, evocative, personal and informative pieces from previous editions of Granta magazine on the experiences of Indian life, culture and politics, including extracts from the highly successful Granta 57: India! The Golden Jubilee. Included are: Suketu Mehta on Mumbai; Chitra Banerji's 'What Bengali Widows Cannot Eat'; Mark Tully on his childhood in Calcutta; Ian Jack's 'Unsteady People' - on unexpected parallels between Bihar and Britain; Urvashi Butalia on tracing her long-lost uncle; a poem by Salman Rushdie about the fatwa; Ramachandra Guha's 'What We Think of America'; Nirad Chaudhuri writing on his 100th birthday; Rory Stewart among the dervishes of Pakistan; Pankaj Mishra on the making of jihadis in Pakistan; as well as fiction by R. K. Narayan, Amit Chaudhuri and Nell Freudenberger.

Granta 138

Author: Sigrid Rausing
Publisher: Granta
ISBN: 1909889040
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
What are the ethics of writing about a place you visit as an outsider? With Granta's long tradition of travel writing in mind, we ask some of the foremost writers of the genre: is travel writing dead? Tara Bergin, Rana Dasgupta, Geoff Dyer, Eliza Griswold, Mohsin Hamid, Lindsey Hilsum, Colin Thubron, Pico Iyer, Ian Jack, Robert Macfarlane, Wendell Steavenson, Samanth Subramanian and Alexis Wright Plus: William Atkins investigates murder on the US-Mexico border Xan Rice goes back to school in South Africa David Flusfeder's road trip to Detroit and California in search of his father's past Xiaolu Guo leaves China's 'semi-tropical south' for the 'solemn and tough north' Janine di Giovanni's homesickness Amit Chaudhuri returns to the city of his birth New fiction from Edna O'Brien; poetry by Emily Berry and Zeyar Lynn; photography by Justin Jin, Carl De Keyzer and Andrew McConnell introduced by A Yi and Adam Marek

How to Travel without Seeing: Dispatches from the New Latin America

Author: Andrés Neuman
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 163206068X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
A kaleidoscopic, fast-paced tour of Latin America from one of the Spanish-speaking world’s most outstanding writers. Lamenting not having more time to get to know each of the nineteen countries he visits after winning the prestigious Premio Alfaguara, Andrés Neuman begins to suspect that world travel consists mostly of “not seeing.” But then he realizes that the fleeting nature of his trip provides him with a unique opportunity: touring and comparing every country of Latin America in a single stroke. Neuman writes on the move, generating a kinetic work that is at once puckish and poetic, aphoristic and brimming with curiosity. Even so-called non-places—airports, hotels, taxis—are turned into powerful symbols full of meaning. A dual Argentine-Spanish citizen, he incisively explores cultural identity and nationality, immigration and globalization, history and language, and turbulent current events. Above all, Neuman investigates the artistic lifeblood of Latin America, tackling with gusto not only literary heavyweights such as Bolaño, Vargas Llosa, Lorca, and Galeano, but also an emerging generation of authors and filmmakers whose impact is now making ripples worldwide. Eye-opening and charmingly offbeat, How to Travel without Seeing: Dispatches from the New Latin America is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of the Americas.

The Immeasurable World

Author: William Atkins
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385539894
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year (UK) "William Atkins is an erudite writer with a wonderful wit and gaze and this is a new and exciting beast of a travel book."—Joy Williams In the classic literary tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Geoff Dyer, a rich and exquisitely written account of travels in eight deserts on five continents that evokes the timeless allure of these remote and forbidding places. One-third of the earth's surface is classified as desert. Restless, unhappy in love, and intrigued by the Desert Fathers who forged Christian monasticism in the Egyptian desert, William Atkins decided to travel in eight of the world's driest, hottest places: the Empty Quarter of Oman, the Gobi Desert and Taklamakan deserts of northwest China, the Great Victoria Desert of Australia, the man-made desert of the Aral Sea in Kazkahstan, the Black Rock and Sonoran Deserts of the American Southwest, and Egypt's Eastern Desert. Each of his travel narratives effortlessly weaves aspects of natural history, historical background, and present-day reportage into a compelling tapestry that reveals the human appeal of these often inhuman landscapes.