SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2017 WINNER OF THE PRIX MEDITERRANEE 2018 From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading - and reliving - Homer's epic masterpiece. When eighty-one-year-old retired scientist Jay unexpectedly enrols in his estranged classicist son Daniel's course on the Odyssey, the journey of a lifetime commences. Professor and student glean life lessons from the page over a semester and, that summer, son and father take to the sea to follow Odysseus's epic trail. Reading Homer becomes their chance to understand each other before it's too late. Theirs is a moving and erudite story of filial love and the importance of the classics. Rich with literary and emotional insight and weaving themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home, this is memoir writing at its finest.

Once in a while fate sets you off in a direction you never expected. When Barbara Haddrill was asked to be a bridesmaid at her friend's wedding in Australia she decided to take the most eco-friendly route possible. Giving up on the easy option - a long haul flight that would have got her to Brisbane in 24 hours - she set off on what was to become an incredible nine-month overland journey. This journey changed her life and let to a worldwide debate about air travel. Feted and attacked by journalists and internet bloggers she became the centre of a media storm that threatened to overshadow the whole trip. Half way through her epic adventure, stranded in the Australian outbreak, reliant on the good will of truckers to get her past a dangerous cyanide spill, she fell to a low point of emotional exhaustion, leading her to question the whole point of her journey. Can one person really make a difference?

Pakistan's largest city is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people. A place of political turbulence, where lavish wealth and absolute poverty sit side by side, and where the lines between idealism and corruption can quickly blur. Through the stories of those who know the city best - including a journalist, an activist, and an ambulance driver - Samira Shackle paints a vivid, vibrant and often violent portrait of Karachi over the past decade: a period during which the Taliban arrived in Pakistan, adding to the daily perils of its residents and pushing their city into the international spotlight. Nuanced and fast-paced, Karachi Vice is an immersive, electrifying journey around one of the most compelling cities in the world.

Travel writing has, for centuries, composed an essential historical record and wide-ranging literary form, reflecting the rich diversity of travel as a social and cultural practice, metaphorical process, and driver of globalization. This interdisciplinary volume brings together anthropologists, literary scholars, social historians, and other scholars to illuminate travel writing in all its forms. With studies ranging from colonial adventurism to the legacies of the Holocaust, The Long Journey offers a unique dual focus on experience and genre as it applies to three key realms: memory and trauma, confrontations with the Other, and the cultivation of cultural perspective.

Ranulph Fiennes has entered the public imagination as the intrepid explorer par excellance. Taunted by his wife over the challenge of the never-before attempted circumpolar navigation of the globe, he set off in 1979 on a gruelling 52,000 mile adventure. Together with fellow members of 21 SAS regiment, Fiennes left from Greenwich, travelling over land, passing through both ends of the polar axis. Completed over three years later, it was the first circumpolar navigation of the globe, and justifiably entered Fiennes into the record books. TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH is the record of that journey. It captures the natural beauty of the landscapes they passed through, and the cameraderie that necessarily grows between men who had served in the British forces' elite regiment and were now throwing themselves into danger of a different sort. Time and again, the expedition found themselves in life-threatening situations, weaving through the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean or sharing a single sleeping bag to ward off the -40 degrees celsius Arctic night. The calm and measured approach which made Fiennes such a great expedition leader shines through TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, deftly recreating the last unexplored regions on earth. It is also a book which lays the foundations for what was to come for Fiennes, confirming a need to exist outside the comfortable norms the rest of us inhabit. As the expedition progresses, there is also a mounting sense of tension as attainment of the final goal also spells the end of the adventure. TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH is a compelling account of one journey and Fiennes' drive to push himself to ever further extremes.

'Robert Twigger is not so much a travel writer as a thrill-seeking philosopher' Esquire The Himalayas beckon and we go ... Some to make real journeys and others to make imaginary ones. These mountains, home to Buddhists, Bonpos, Jains, Muslims, Hindus, shamans and animists, to name only a few, are a place of pilgrimage and dreams, revelation and war, massacre and invasion, but also peace and unutterable calm. In an exploration of the region's seismic history, Robert Twigger unravels some of these real and invented journeys and the unexpected links between them. Following a meandering path across the Himalayas to its physical end in Nagaland on the Indian-Burmese border, Twigger encounters incredible stories from a unique cast of mountaineers and mystics, pundits and prophets. The result is a sweeping, enthralling and surprising journey through the history of the world's greatest mountain range.

Samuel Pepys walked round London for miles. The 21/2 miles to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London was accomplished on an almost daily basis, and so many of his professional conversations took place whilst walking that the streets became for him an alternative to his office. With Walking Pepys's London, the reader will come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist. The city was almost as much a character in Pepys's life as his family or friends, and the book draws many parallels between his experience of 17th-century London and the lives of Londoners today. Colliss Harvey's new book reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of the past, bringing geography, biography and history into one. Full of fascinating details and written with extraordinary sensitivity, Walking Pepys's London is an unmissable exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.

River of gold is the story of South Africa’s most iconic river, described by Rudyard Kipling as the ‘great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo all set about with fever trees’. Here for the first time is the only full account of this river’s history, its ancient past, wildlife, landscapes, early kingdoms and their people, warfare, trade, slaves, 19th-century hunting, travel and adventures and the conservation efforts of four national parks of which the renowned Kruger National Park is one. The book (and the river) encompasses two world heritage sites, two Transfrontier conservation areas, private game reserves, some of the richest rock art sites in southern Africa with the river’s ‘source’ centred at the site of the world’s richest gold deposits ever discovered, Johannesburg. After 1750 km, this amazing river, which to early travellers had neither a beginning nor an end, sharing a border with four southern Africa countries, enters the Indian Ocean 50 km southeast of the town of Xai Xai in Mozambique, first recorded by Vincent Erskine in 1869. Two of the authors, Clive Walker and Peter Norton, in their quest to unearth its secrets have travelled the length of the river from its source to the sea. Not in one journey but several over a number of years while at the same time photographing its unique landscapes, wildlife and people. Only two works have ever been published about the river. The first by Carl Birkby in 1939, Limpopo journey, a journalist and war correspondent, and the artist Walter Battiss in 1965, simply titled Limpopo. Both accounts concentrated on the author’s impressions and journeys along sections of the river. River of gold is to be published by Jacana Media, in full colour with some 200 images, numerous sketches, maps and an afterword by Dr John Ledger. This long-awaited publication comes at a critical time with the growing concern for the country’s water resources, threats to our rivers, wetlands and catchment areas, loss of municipal water through aging infrastructure and contamination through sewage outflow. Add climate change to the mix and the prospects grow dimmer. If this publication can reveal the magnificence of one of our prime rivers and draw attention to its unique biodiversity and history, this publication will reveal information previously unknown and draw attention to rivers and wetlands and the vital need to conserve them.

An Italian explorer explores America, finding what he believes to be the source of the Mississippi and spending a great deal of time observing Native American tribes. vol. 2 of 2

After a decade of making documentaries about offbeat characters on the fringes of US society, Louis had the urge to return to America and track down the people who most fascinated him. It would be a reunion tour, but this time without the cameras and the sense of performance being filmed inevitably brings. It would allow him to get closer to people, to discover what really motivated them and what had happened to the assorted dreamers, outlaws and eccentrics since he last saw them. On a journey that took him from the porn sets of Los Angeles to the gangsta rappers of Memphis, from a convention of UFO contactees in Arizona to Northern Idaho for a festive get-together of neo-Nazis, he asked what 'weird people' have to tell us about our own secret natures. Had he learned anything about himself by being among them? Do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us? Louis Theroux's first book is a hilarious, thought-provoking and at times surreal voyage into the heart of weirdness.

'An entertaining book, written with Fort's characteristic conversational style... A real pleasure to read' - BBC Countryfile 'A wide-ranging, intelligent and bracingly enjoyable book' - The Literary Review 'Meticulously researched and seasoned with wry humour, this is a perceptive and richly rewarding read' - Mail on Sunday We have lived in villages a long time. The village was the first model for communal living. Towns came much later, then cities. Later still came suburbs, neighbourhoods, townships, communes, kibbutzes. But the village has endured. Across England, modernity creeps up to the boundaries of many, breaking the connection the village has with the land. With others, they can be as quiet as the graveyard as their housing is bought up by city 'weekenders', or commuters. The ideal chocolate box image many holidaying to our Sceptred Isle have in their minds eye may be true in some cases, but across the country the heartbeat of the real English village is still beating strongly - if you can find it. To this mission our intrepid historian and travel writer Tom Fort willingly gets on his trusty bicycle and covers the length and breadth of England to discover the essence of village life. His journeys will travel over six thousand years of communal existence for the peoples that eventually became the English. Littered between the historical analysis, are personal memories from Tom of the village life he remembers and enjoys today in rural Oxfordshire.

Bestselling travel writer Richard Grant "sensitively probes the complex and troubled history of the oldest city on the Mississippi River through the eyes of a cast of eccentric and unexpected characters" (Newsweek). Natchez, Mississippi, once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in America, and its wealth was built on slavery and cotton. Today it has the greatest concentration of antebellum mansions in the South, and a culture full of unexpected contradictions. Prominent white families dress up in hoopskirts and Confederate uniforms for ritual celebrations of the Old South, yet Natchez is also progressive enough to elect a gay black man for mayor with 91% of the vote. Much as John Berendt did for Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the hit podcast S-Town did for Woodstock, Alabama, so Richard Grant does for Natchez in The Deepest South of All. With humor and insight, he depicts a strange, eccentric town with an unforgettable cast of characters. There's Buzz Harper, a six-food-five gay antique dealer famous for swanning around in a mink coat with a uniformed manservant and a very short German bodybuilder. There's Ginger Hyland, "The Lioness," who owns 500 antique eyewash cups and decorates 168 Christmas trees with her jewelry collection. And there's Nellie Jackson, a Cadillac-driving brothel madam who became an FBI informant about the KKK before being burned alive by one of her customers. Interwoven through these stories is the more somber and largely forgotten account of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a West African prince who was enslaved in Natchez and became a cause celebre in the 1820s, eventually gaining his freedom and returning to Africa. With an "easygoing manner" (Geoff Dyer, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition), this book offers a gripping portrait of a complex American place, as it struggles to break free from the past and confront the legacy of slavery.

Welcome to Iceland, a very small nation with a very large number (two hundred and sixty five) of (mostly) very small museums. Founded in the backyards of houses, begun as jokes or bets or memorials to lost friends, these museums tell the story of an enchanted island where bridges arrived only at the beginning of the 20th century, and waterproof shoes only with the second world war. A nation formerly dirt poor, then staggeringly rich, and now building its way to affluence once again. A nation where, in the remote and wild places, you might encounter still a shore laddie, a sorcerer or a ghost. From Reykjavik's renowned Phallological Museum to a house of stones on the eastern coast; from the curious monsters which roam the remote shores of Bildudalur to a museum of whales which proves impossible to find, here is an enchanted story of obsession, curation, and the peculiar magic of this isolated island.

One life sabbatical. Two laps around the world. After being married for a year, Bob Riel and his wife, Lisa, decided to take a chance in life. They took time off from their careers and embarked on a round-the-world journey, intent on having an adventure before starting a family. Then, two-and-a-half years later, when the children hadn't arrived and the travel bug hadn't left, they set out on another voyage to resume their sabbatical experience. During their two journeys, they faced the shock of a terrorist bombing in Egypt, met a Turkish carpet dealer who trained acrobatic pigeons, discussed life with Masai tribesmen, visited a Japanese family whose mother thought she knew them in another lifetime, and watched the sunrise from a boat on the Ganges River and from atop Mount Sinai. Lyrical and humorous, "Two Laps Around the World" is a testament to the possibilities of travel, as Bob and Lisa's explorations also grew into a series of Life Lessons and Global Rules that will inspire reflection. This captivating memoir is certain to arouse wanderlust in every reader.

Craving an escape from everyday life, Gregor Ewing writes a personal account of his 1,000 mile walk over nine weeks with collie Meg that takes them through the central belt of Scotland, literally following in Robert the Bruce's footsteps. From Kintyre, Arran and Ardrossan north to Ayr through Glasgow to Fort William and Elgin, south to Inverurie, Aberdeen and Dundee, over the Forth to Edinburgh and Berwick upon Tweed then east through Roxburghshire to Bannockburn, Gregor frames his expedition with historical background that follows Robert the Bruce's journey to start a campaign which led to his famous victory seven years later.

A Turn in the South is a reflective journey by V. S. Naipaul in the late 1980s through the American South. Naipaul writes of his encounters with politicians, rednecks, farmers, writers and ordinary men and women, both black and white, with the insight and originality we expect from one of our best travel writers. Fascinating and poetic, this is a remarkable book on race, culture and country. 'Naipaul's writing is supple and fluid, meticulously crafted, adventurous and quick to surprise. And, as usual, there's the freshness and originality of his way of looking at things' Sunday Times 'Naipaul writes as if a modern oracle has chosen to speak through him. It is a tissue of brilliantly recorded hearsay, of intense listening by a man with a remarkable ear' New York Times Review of Books 'This is a journey below the Mason-Dixon line into a society riven by too many defeats; the broken cause of the old Confederacy, and the frustrated anger of Southern blacks whose power is circumscribed . . . It is the best thing outside fiction that I have read on the Old South pregnant with the new since W. J. Cash's The Mind of the South published over fifty years ago' Sunday Telegraph

'Quietly triumphant.' Donal Ryan 'Ambitious and gentle.' Belinda McKeon 'A terrific book.' Michael Harding In May 2020, John Connell finds himself, like so many others, confined to his local area, the opportunity to freely travel and socialise cut short. His attention turns to the Camlin river - an ever-present source of life for his town's inhabitants and, for John, a site of boyhood adventure, first love, family history and local legend. He decides to canoe its course with his friend, Sunday Times journalist Peter Geoghegan, a two-day trip requiring physical exertion and mental resilience. As the world grows still around them, the river continues to teem with life - a symphony of buzzing mayfly and jumping trout. During their meander downstream, John reflects on his life: his travels, his past relationships and his battle with depression, as well as on Irish folklore, geopolitics and philosophy. The Stream of Everything is both a reverie and a celebration of close observation; a winding, bucolic account of the summer we discovered home.

The nexus between travel, writing and media in the contemporary world is dense: travel practice is increasingly interwoven with media; representations in old and new media are co-present and converge. Digitisation has had a profound impact on the practice and mediation of travel, but this volume aims to show that travel and its representation have always been enlaced with media. With contributions by experts in literary and cultural studies, journalism studies and informatics, the book takes a multi- and interdisciplinary approach and covers a wide range of media, from the hand-crafted album to social media. It illustrates how current transformations invite us to revisit earlier periods of travel writing and their media environments, and to explore the ways in which contemporary forms of mediation are prefigured by earlier practices and forms. The book addresses readers interested in travel writing, travel studies and cultural studies. Chapters Introduction, 3, 7 and 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Funded by University of Freiburg.

From the present-day street life of Ginza, to the heights of Mount Fuji in the company of 16th-century traveller and poet Basho: the most recent addition of Eland's through writers' eyes series brings together a chorus of voices from Japan and across the globe. Detailed introductions stemming from Elizabeth Ingram's own experiences as a traveller, (later a resident) and journalist in Japan, develop a lively and intimate portrait of towns and provinces, making it an ideal companion. A library in the palm of your hand: extracts of prose, poetry and novels from a rich variety of writers, including Jan Morris, Nicolas Bouvier, Oswald Wynd, Peter Popham, Basho, Yasunari Kawabata, Alan Booth, Futabei Shimei, Angela Carter, Joao Rodrigues and Mary Crawford Fraser. It is a source book for those visiting Japan for the first time and for expatriates. One must never forget that for all the talk of the new Asia, the Japanese economy is still bigger than that of India and China combined.

The second book in V. S. Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy. In 1964 V. S. Naipaul published An Area of Darkness, his semi-autobiographical account of a year in India. Two visits later, prompted by the Emergency of 1975, he came to write India: A Wounded Civilization. In this work he casts a more analytical eye than before over Indian attitudes, while recapitulating and further probing the feelings aroused in him by this vast, mysterious, and agonized country. What he saw and heard - evoked so superbly and vividly in these pages - reinforced in him a conviction that India, wounded by a thousand years of foreign rule, has not yet found an ideology of regeneration. A work of fierce candour and precision, it is also a generous description of one man's complicated relationship with the country of his ancestors. 'A devastating work, but proof that a novelist of Naipaul's stature can often define problems quicker and more effectively than a team of economists and other experts' The Times

"For those who love boats, architecture and original enquiring minds, this book is a dream. " -Jeremy Irons World-famous architect Renzo Piano and his son Carlo set sail from Genoa one late Summer day, guided by the ancestral desire felt by many explorers before them: to find Atlantis (in Italian, Atlantide). Atlantis is the perfect city, built to harbour a perfect society. This is its true beauty, precious and elusive. Renzo Piano, a man who can not only measure land at a glance but also the sea's infinite geometry, returns to the places where he has erected his works, mosaic pieces in the infinite, necessary quest for perfection. With his son he sails across the Pacific, along the banks of the Thames and the Seine, reaching as far as Athens, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and Osaka Bay. In search of beauty, he finds the imperfections that every building project carries within it. And so, all that remains is to sail on.

'Impossible to put down' Observer 'One of the great books of the century' Times Literary Supplement Rebecca West's epic masterpiece not only provides deep insight into the former country of Yugoslavia; it is a portrait of Europe on the brink of war. A heady cocktail of personal travelogue and historical insight, this product of an implacably inquisitive intelligence remains essential for anyone attempting to understand the history of the Balkan states, and the wider ongoing implications for a fractured Europe.

Through the centre of China's historic capital, Long Peace Street cuts a long, arrow-straight line. It divides the Forbidden City, home to generations of Chinese emperors, from Tiananmen Square, the vast granite square constructed to glorify a New China under Communist rule. To walk the street is to travel through the story of China's recent past, wandering among its physical relics and hearing echoes of its dramas. Long Peace Street recounts a journey in modern China, a walk of twenty miles across Beijing offering a very personal encounter with the life of the capital's streets. At the same time, it takes the reader on a journey through the city's recent history, telling the story of how the present and future of the world's rising superpower has been shaped by its tumultuous past, from the demise of the last imperial dynasty in 1912 through to the present day. -- .

At a fateful travel writing workshop, Barbara, Louise, and Janet knew they had to collaborate. Soon, Wendy joined them, and the new writing group got to work.

LOUISE enjoys easy travels, wine, and good food. She takes you deep inside a Hungarian wine cellar and travels from Dawson City in the wild north of Canada, to Guadeloupe and Barbados. JAN adores the sea. She recounts the adventures of flying around Cape Horn, exploring the Galapagos, and learning to jump off a boat near Ireland's wild Aran Islands.

WENDY seeks out those places most of us wouldn't dare to visit. She's been to much of Africa and Asia and calls Pakistan her second home. While sick in Malawi, she found refuge in a tea estate. In Germany, the discovered lost Jewish roots.

BARBARA, the group's hiker, has traveled through Mali, fed hungry children in Kinshasa, and trekked around Mont Blanc and into the Himalayas for a glimpse into the Dragon Kingdom of Bhutan and the Valley of the Flowers in India.

Here, they share adventures and mishaps, frustrations and delights. They invite readers in for intimate reflections on what it means to travel-and why they are so drawn in by the planet's many siren songs.