This wonderful collection of travel writing captures the very best of Getaway's articles over the past 21 years of travel, exploration and adventure. It's a celebration of the diversity of the continent and of the journalists that write about it: from the founding editor, David Steele, to the unforgettable Patrick Wagner; the pens of David Bristow and Don Pinnock; the new guard lead by Justin Fox and Cameron Ewart-Smith; and the journalists who have worked alongside them to offer the readers new insights into the African way of life. From personal accounts of the journeys and their destinations to uncovering the world and the environment in which we live, this title is a superb showcase of the writing that has made Getaway the leading travel magazine in Southern Africa.

This book, first published in 1903, is an account of Lafcadio Hearn's insights and experiences of Japan. Hearn, known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo, was an international writer who was best known for his books about Japan and Japanese culture. This book will be of interest to students of history and Asian Studies.

'It was rugged travel; the hotels where we stayed were basic and often dirty. We lived on bread, cheese, figs, pastis and wine. The bus journeys were slow and suffocating, with long stops for no particular reason. One day we would be languishing in the humid heat of an estuary, the next exhilarated by sweet mountain air, waking to forests and mountains. We never saw an English person, and hardly any French, except at Calvi and Ile-Rousse towards the end of our trip.'

That is Alan Ross describing Corsica in 1947 which he and the artist John Minton visited, in the footsteps of Edward Lear, expressly to write this book. Although admitting, perhaps too modestly, to the influence of Graham Greene's "The Lawless Roads" and" Journey Without Maps" and therefore 'too inclined to see Corsica in terms of defeated priests, corrupt politicians and saintly monks' he wrote one of the best travel books since the Second World War. It is, in fact, a collaboration between a gifted writer and the most romantic artist of his generation, and, in its own lesser way, it played a part, alongside the early Elizabeth Davids (also illustrated by John Minton), of reminding drab, grey, post-war Britain of a warmer, sunnier, more colourful alternative: the Mediterranean.

'Evocative and splendid . . . alert, fresh and sensuous' "Times Literary Supplement"

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'Poetic, personal, the pungent effect of travel on keen senses' V. S. Pritchett, "New Statesman"

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'Splashed with bold strokes and burning colours . . . We are made to see and small, hear and feel the place. That is the test of a good travel book' "Observer "

A Guardian Travel Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards ‘The premise of this book is simple, or that is what it seemed when I started.’ Peter Fiennes follows in the footsteps of twelve inspirational writers, bringing modern Britain into focus by peering through the lens of the past. The journey starts in Dorset, shaped by the childhood visions of Enid Blyton, and ends with Charles Dickens on the train that took him to his final resting place in Westminster Abbey. From the wilds of Skye and Snowdon, to a big night out in Birmingham with J. B. Priestley and Beryl Bainbridge, Footnotes is a series of evocative biographies, a lyrical foray into the past, and a quest to understand Britain through the books, journals and diaries of some of our greatest writers. And as Fiennes travels the country, and roams across the centuries, he wonders: ‘Who are we? What do we want? They seemed like good questions to ask, in the company of some of our greatest writers, given these restless times.’

This book is the culmination of various expeditions made by well-known artist and bestselling author David Bellamy to his beloved Arctic. His descriptions of his travels, written from an artist's point of view, vividly bring to life the challenges he faced when painting outdoors in one of the harshest environments on the planet, and make for an exhilarating and captivating read. Filled with David's watercolour paintings and sketches, made during his various expeditions, the book provides a fascinating insight into the wildlife and people that live within the Arctic Circle and captures perfectly the majesty and breathtaking beauty of the world's final wilderness.

In one of the most intrepid travelogues in recent memory, Emma Larkin tells of the year she spent traveling through Burma, using as a compass the life and work of George Orwell, whom many of Burma's underground teahouse intellectuals call simply ?the Prophet.? In stirring prose, she provides a powerful reckoning with one of the world's least free countries. "Finding George Orwell in Burma" is a brave and revelatory reconnaissance of modern Burma, one of the world's grimmest and most shuttered police states, where the term ?Orwellian? aptly describes the life endured by the country's people. BACKCOVER: ?A truer picture of authoritarianism than anyone has written since, perhaps, Orwell himself.?
"?Mother Jones"
?Mournful, meditative, appealingly idiosyncratic . . . an exercise in literary detection but also a political travelogue.?
"?The New York Times"
?Combining literary criticism with solid field reporting, Larkin] captures the country at its best and, more often, its worst.?
"?San Francisco Chronicle"
? A] sobering, journalistic memoir . . . A disquieting profile of a country and its people.?
"?Newsweek"

Thirty hand-picked tattoo shops and the work of over one hundred artists are included in this book showcasing the blossoming body art communities in New Mexico and Arizona. Displayed are over 600 color photos of tattoo artistry. Trendsetting artists create a wide range of tattoo art in motifs as diverse as the men and women who receive and appreciate them. The artwork ranges from the small to the large. Classic black and white artistry and modern full color work are featured. Themes captured include natural scenes, animals and birds, flowers, nautical scenes and symbols, Oriental motifs from dragons to geishas, portraits of loved ones, religious art, Day of the Dead motifs, occult symbology, and much more. The artists and their shops are also featured. For anyone with an appreciation of tattoo artistry, this book is for you.

Shortly after the dramatic events of 1989, Eva Hoffman spent several months travelling through her native Poland and four other Eastern European countries, what was then Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, all of which had just undergone an historic transformation.

While making her way from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Eva Hoffman ranged from capital cities to wayside villages and sleepy provincial towns; she visited shipyards, museums, homes and the coffee-houses of the intelligentsia, and she talked to a great variety of people, many of whom were struggling with the transition from an unwanted pass to an uncertain future.

Through these encounters, through anecdotes, revealing observations and biographical portraits, Eva Hoffman evoked the eclectic mosaic of the new Eastern Europe, while also reconstructing the turbulent experiences of the post-war decades and reflecting on the uses and misuses of historical memory.

"Exit into History" remains an arresting and intimate report from a contemporary revolution, one that has changed Europe for ever.

'It is the enormous merit of Hoffman's book that it is free from ideological claptrap. It is beautifully written, full of word pictures that stay in the mind. She understands the way human beings have been moulded by politics, gender, race and generation.' "Independent"

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'It is a great achievement and a unique book . . . This is an indispensable clue for anyone who is keen to understand how the new Europe is emerging from the debris of the Cold War period.' Ryszard Kapuscinski

'Like London, like Paris or New York or pre-war Alexandria, Bombay contains not just many different social worlds but whole solar systems of different societies moving separately and intricately over the same territory. Ever since its insignificant and hesitant beginnings it has acted as a draw for people of so many races and languages, Indian, Middle Eastern and European, that there is no one tongue in general use there. For a while the largest city east of Suez till you came to Tokyo, and the largest in the British Empire after London, Bombay has always just missed being a world capital.'

This is Gillian Tindall's own description. Bombay (Mumbai) is indeed one of the great cities of the world and this book, first published in 1982, does full justice to it.

'Fascinating. Gillian Tindall has brought the great city richly to life. It is a keenly perceptive account - at once loving and stringent.' Colin Thubron.

'A glowing evocation of a great exotic subject . . . A celebration of the city' John Carey, "Sunday Times"

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'Her feeling for the past is not tinged with curry or sentimentality . . . her perceptions, visual and historical, are acute . . . a good an unusual choice as Bombay's biographer' "Observer"

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'Insatiably curious, novelist and historian, Gillian Tindall does not rest until she gets tot he origins of whatever interests her. Here she has focused on architecture and the British roots of the metropolis. She has accomplished the job admirably' - "New Statesman"

In this unique book, part eulogy, part history, part travelogue, Charlie English goes in search of the best snow on the planet. Along the way he explains the extraordinary hold this commonplace phenomenon has over us, and reveals the ongoing drama of our relationship with it. Combining on-the-slopes experience with off-piste research, Charlie English's journey begins with the magical moment when his two-year-old son sees snow for the first time, before setting off in the footsteps of the Romantic poets over the Alps, following the sled-tracks of the Inuit across Greenland, and meeting up with a flurry of fellow enthusiasts, from snow-making scientists in Japan and global warming experts in California to plough drivers in Alaska.This is a book for anyone who reaches for their mittens at the sight of the first flake.

In "Jackdaw Cake" Norman Lewis recounts the first half of his adventurous life with dry, infectious, laconic wit, observing the transformation of a stammering schoolboy into a worldly wise multilingual intelligence agent on the point of becoming a formidable travel writer.

First published in 1991, Gavin Young's hugely acclaimed In Search of Conrad was joint winner of the 1992 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. 'Part-mariner's log and part-detective story, [In Search of Conrad] brilliantly evokes the Far Eastern landscapes fixed forever in our imaginations by Conrad's novels. But above all Young makes us realize that the world Conrad described nearly a century ago is still there ... the most pleasurable and exciting book I have read this year.' J. G. Ballard, Daily Telegraph 'Young's passion for Conrad and his stories blazes from every porthole.' John Carey, Sunday Times 'Young has an eye for atmosphere; he is marvellous on Singapore as her past impinges on the present, myriad streets stalked by ghosts from the nineteenth century ... In Search of Conrad is both scholarly and enthralling - always vivid, and often a hoot to read ... better still it may set you to reading Conrad again.' Independent 'Gavin Young has managed to write something rare in recent literature - a happy book about the Third World which also has the ring of truth.' Jonathan Raban, Independent on Sunday

Gavin Young' s North American odyssey took him from Central Park and the old Atlantic whaling ports all the way to a tiny cabin in the Yukon, where Jack London heard 'the call of the wild'. Whether sleuthing through riot-racked Los Angeles in the footsteps of Philip Marlowe, crossing the Arizona Desert on Route 66 like Steinbeck's Depression-era migrant workers or searching for the characters of Cannery Row in Monterey, Young brilliantly uses the past to illuminate the present. 'Gavin Young is perpetually inquisitive, racially colour-blind, intrepid, reflective and gregarious ... plainly a man in a million, and a writer in two.' Bernard Levin 'He catches the mind's eye of the reader very deftly ... and, without losing his sense of irony, gives us a genuine account of the tragedy and the pathos, as well as the optimism and bravery, that created American civilization.' Christoper Hitchens, Mail on Sunday

It was the legendary traveller Wilfred Thesiger who first introduced Gavin Young to the Marshes of Iraq. Since then Young has been entranced by both the beauty of the Marshes and by the Marsh Arabs who inhabit them, a people whose lifestyle is almost unchanged from that of their predecessors, the Ancient Sumerians. On his return to the Marshes some years later Gavin Young found that the twentieth-century had rudely intruded on this lifestyle and that war was threatening to make the Marsh Arabs existence extinct. Return to the Marshes, first published in 1977, is at once a moving tribute to a unique way of life as well as a love story to a place and its people. 'A superbly written essay which combines warmth of personal tone, a good deal of easy historical scholarship and a talent for vivid description rarely found outside good fiction.' Jonathan Raban, Sunday Times

As an Observer correspondent in Vietnam before the American withdrawal in 1975, Gavin Young met many courageous Vietnamese people. He frequently stayed with one such person, Madame Bong, a woman who had lost her husband when she was only twenty-five, had recovered the mangled limbs of one son from a battlefield and watched as another son was sent off to a 're-education camp' for seven years. When Young was allowed to return to Vietnam he helped many of Madame Bong's relatives emigrate to the US. A Wavering Grace is a personal account of how one ordinary family survived the horrors of war and a political process that was beyond their control. 'By far ... the most moving account of Vietnam to be written in recent years.' Norman Lewis 'This delicate, terrible and enchanting book ... brings the atmosphere of Vietnam so near that you can almost taste and smell it.' Jonathan Mirsky, The Times 'Full of passion and feeling ... A Wavering Grace could be described as a love story [and] tells the story of Vietnam and Mme Bong's family in its many conflicting complexions.' Andrew Barrow, Spectator

In this, the sequel to Slow Boats to China (also reissued in Faber Finds), Gavin Young tells, with equal panache, of his return voyage from the China Seas to England, via the South Seas, Cape Horn and West Africa. 'I am decidedly envious of Gavin Young and his Slow Boats Home, successor to his highly entertaining Slow Boats to China . . . a fascinating, memorable book.' Eric Newby, the Guardian 'Like Slow Boats to China this is likely to become a classic of travel.' Francis King, the Spectator

This volume collects the best of Gavin Young's journalism. These pieces, by turn elegant, vivid and compassionate, display his acute understanding of the varied worlds in which we live. 'Young is a born raconteur. His writing is full of visual impressions and touches of sensibility. He is driven more by people than by seats of power. But it is difficult to be a compassionate journalist without appearing soppy or sentimental. Young often achieves it. One finishes Worlds Apart exhilarated, moved, angered and enthralled: a tribute to its quality.' Jon Swain, Sunday Times

A Short Border Handbook is a cogent and comical journey into the depths of dictatorship, migration, and borders from an Albanian who grew up in Enver Hoxha's Stalinist madhouse, longing for the West, only to find yet more visible and invisible borders on his arrival. After spending his childhood in Stalinist Albania during the Cold War, and fantasizing about life across the border, the unnamed protagonist (based closely on the author) flees to Greece, the only country in the Balkans that belonged to the "Western bloc" only to get banged up in a detention center. As he and his fellow immigrants try to make sense of the new world, they find jobs and plan their future lives in Greece, imagining success that is always beyond their grasp. The sheer absurdity of both their plans and their new lives is overwhelming. In a narrative both ironic and emotional, Kapllani interweaves the story of his experience with meditations upon "border syndrome" a mental state, as much as a geographical experience to create a brilliantly observed, amusing, and perceptive debut. And an ever timely one at that.

Be transported to the bountiful islands of Indonesia by this collection of fragrant, colourful and mouth-watering recipes. 'An exciting and panoramic selection of dishes and snacks' - Fuchsia Dunlop, author of The Food of Sichuan 'Start with Lara's fragrant chicken soup, do lots of exploring on the way whilst dousing everything with spoonfuls of sambal, and end with her coconut and pandan sponge cake' - Yotam Ottolenghi, author of SIMPLE Coconut & Sambal reveals the secrets behind authentic Indonesian cookery. With more than 80 traditional and vibrant recipes that have been passed down through the generations, you will discover dishes such as Nasi goreng, Beef rendang, Chilli prawn satay and Pandan cake, alongside a variety of recipes for sambals: fragrant, spicy relishes that are undoubtedly the heart and soul of every meal. Lara uses simple techniques and easily accessible ingredients throughout Coconut and Sambal, interweaving the recipes with beguiling tales of island life and gorgeous travel photography that shines a light on the magnificent, little-known cuisine of Indonesia. What are you waiting for? Travel the beautiful islands of Indonesia and taste the different regions through these recipes. 'An incredibly delicious Indonesian meal on your table every time' - Jeremy Pang, chef and founder of School of Wok

Throughout the 1960's John Freely and Hilary Sumner-Boyd explored every alley, cove and monument of their adopted home of Istanbul in between their teaching jobs. They created a legendary guidebook, covering 1,500 years of Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, to a city that was still innocent of tourists. But the passages that were too personal, too capricious, too idiosyncratic, too indulgent of eccentric personalities, too melancholically obsessed with lost monuments, too wrapped up in the love of mid-afternoon banter, too indulgent of musicians, dancers, gypsies, dervish, drunks, beggars, fishermen, poets, fortune-tellers, folk healers, mimics and prostitutes were cut from their scholarly guidebook. Stamboul Sketches is a slim book compiled from these editorial floor off-cuts. Inspired by travelling in the footsteps of Evliya Celebi, the Puck-like Pepys who wrote about 17th century Istanbul, Stamboul Sketches is a beautiful, quirky portrait of a city caught like a bird on the wing, so much changed but so much the same.

At the end of the 1830s, during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, two famous accounts, through foreign eyes, were being written about Russia. By far the better known one is the Marquis de Custine's Russia in 1839. For all its brilliance, however, it doesn't begin to compete with J. G. Kohl's slightly later work, just called Russia, when it comes to thoroughness, range and sympathy of observation. Kohl was a German. Unlike de Custine, who only made a brief visit, he spent several years in Russia. He assimilated himself, learnt the language and enjoyed the experience. He set himself the task of writing about 'general features and popular manners of a large portion of the Russian Empire'. and succeeded with warm-heartedness and tolerance. It is refreshing to read such a positive account. For example, St Petersburg appeared to him not only a beautiful but a cheerful city with its dashing izvoztchiks, its crowded market-places, its frequent fetes, when high and low mixed together. He was not afraid of paradox, of Russia itself writing, 'There is perhaps no country in the world where all classes are so intimately connected with each other as in this vast empire, or so little divided into castes. Contrary to the prevailing belief, in no country are the extremes of society brought into more frequent contact, and in few are the transitions from one class to another more frequent or sudden. The peasant becomes a priest on the same day perhaps than an imperial mandate degrades the noble to a peasant or to a Siberian colonist. Hereditary rank is disregarded while public services often lead rapidly to the highest dignities. Even serfs are more nomadic in their habits than our free German peasants.' The English translation was first published in 1842.

In the face of widespread misinformation and misunderstanding, a climate scientist ventures into the vast heart of America's new oil country on just two wheels. Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway-an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast, flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits. As Goodrich journeys through the Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Park and across the prairies of the upper Midwest and Canada, we get a raw and ground-level view of where the tar sands and oil reserves are being opened up at an incredible and unprecedented pace. Extraordinary and unregulated, this "black goldrush" is boom and bust in every sense. In a manner reminiscent of John McPhee and Rachel Carson, combined with Goodrich's wry self-deprecation and scientific expertise, A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean is a galvanizing and adventure-filled read that gets to the heart of drilling on our continent.

A young gay man bewildered and lost on the highways of Los Angeles; a gay Muslim in Berlin; a rent boy in Shanghai; a holiday romance in Mexico; a man from Dakar in a bathhouse in Paris; a love hotel in Tokyo; a darkroom in Rio; a hamam in Syria; the burning ghats on the Ganges; Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto and atheist; legal and illegal blazing through 17 countries on six continents, Homo Odyssey is an explicit, upfront, edgy, often funny, travel adventure that will leave you seeing the world and yourself with different eyes. How do men sexually attracted to other men live in different parts of the world? How do they see themselves? How have they survived over the centuries, mostly in places hostile to them?"

A postmodern romp through the rain forest, "Equatoria" is both travelog and cultural critique. On the right-hand pages, the Prices chronicle their 1990 artefact-collecting expedition up the rivers of French Guiana, and on the left, they feature extracts from the works of Jonathan Swift, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Alex Haley, James Clifford, Eric Hobsbawm, Germaine Greer and even the noted anthropologist James Goodfellow (who asks for more sex). Also included are quotes from the nurses, doctors, tourists, convicts and countless others who live in the French penal colony-turned-space center in tropical South America. Charged with acquiring objects for a new museum, the Prices kept a log of their day-to-day adventures and misadventures, constantly confronting their ambivalence about the act of collecting, the very possibility of exhibiting cultures and the future of anthropology.