Travel writing is a genre monopolised by Westerners. For centuries the preserve of Europeans who reported on the "exotic", it sought to make sense of other landscapes and cultures, but almost exclusively through a European prism of references. This anthology, stretching from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries, introduces an entirely different tradition of travel writing - the work of travellers from the world beyond Europe. Other Routes collects important primary work by travel writers from Asia and Africa in English translation. Encompassing spiritual journeys, the personal, ethnography, natural history, geography, cartography, navigation, politics, history, religion and diplomacy, it shows that Africans and Asians also travelled the world and left travel writing worth reading. An introduction by Tabish Khair discusses travel literature as a genre, the perception of travel and writing about travel as a European privilege, and the emergence of new writings that show that travel has been a human occupation that crosses time and culture. Selections include The Travels of a Japanese Monk (c. 838), Al-Abdari, The Disgruntled Traveller (c. 1290), A Korean Official's Account of China (1488), The Poetry of Basho's Road (1689), Malabari: A Love-Hate Affair with the British (1890).

At first glance, Jamilla and Ameena couldn't be more different. Both are Yorkshire-born teenage girls of South Asian descent; but whereas Jamilla lives with her conservative Muslim family and is quiet, religious and academically bright, the more worldly Ameena masks her insecurity behind a brassy, bawdy persona and lives with her divorced mum. The two strike up an unlikely, fateful friendship. Ameena teases Jamilla about her hijab, nicknaming her `nunja', but also accompanies her to a study group at the mosque as a lark. In the wake of a deeply bruising rejection by a popular boy at school, Ameena develops a serious interest in religion. She begins to espouse a militant version of Islam, and communicates over the Internet with a recruiter for jihad in Syria, influencing Jamilla in turn. Filled with a new sense of belonging as well as idealised visions of a new spiritual order, the girls flee England for Islamist Syria. Once there, Ameena marries a jihadi she met online. Jamilla, however, resists marriage and becomes a lieutenant to the wife of a powerful commander, whose `orphanage' turns out jihadi brides and suicide bombers in equal measure. The girls slowly realise that their new reality is a narrow, brutal universe apart from the one they had imagined. Ameena copes by becoming ever more zealous, and increasingly dangerous to Jamilla. Cornered and desperate, Jamilla must figure out how to save herself from her former best friend...

..". brings new insights into the colonial relationship while challenging the unspoken temptation that this was a distinctly European period." Simon Gikandi

Other Routes collects important primary work by travel writers from Asia and Africa in English translation. An introduction by Tabish Khair discusses travel literature as a genre, the perception of travel and writing about travel as a European privilege, and the emergence of new writings that show that travel has been a human occupation that crosses time and culture. This original and significant book will interest armchair travelers and others in views of people and places away from the European traveler s gaze.

Selections include "The Travels of a Japanese Monk" (c. 838), "Al-Abdari, the Disgruntled Traveller" (c. 1290), "A Korean Official s Account of China" (1488), "The Poetry of Basho s Road" (1689), "Malabari: A Love-Hate Affair with the British" (1890)."

Set primarily in India and spanning the twentieth century, Filming tells a series of stories, including that of one-time prostitute Durga, who is persuaded to give away her young son, Ashok, and that of Saleem, the son of a prostitute and two-times star of the silver screen. As these stories intertwine and overlap, they combine to create a novel that is simultaneously about the small details and the bigger picture, weaving together major historical events - including Partition, the assassination of Gandhi, the rise of photography and the Bombay film industry, and the development of barbed wire - with the everyday moments that make up the fabric of our lives. 'Its plot, like a Bollywood melodrama, teems with characters and incident' Guardian 'Elegantly structured and taut with understated passion, Filming is a brilliant recreation of the lost world of early cinema and the continuing tragedy of religious hatred . . . Its delights as well as its message should find admiring readers everywhere' Independent 'Absorbing . . . Filming is distinguished by its ambition, its structural inventiveness and its highly evocative prose' TLS 'Underpinning this intriguing novel is a concern for the truth . . . In keeping with Khair's pertinent and thought-provoking musings on self-deception, its skill lies in making us question our assumptions about what we do and why we do it' New Statesman