- Published: 01/11/2012
- ISBN: 9781847083302
- 129x20mm
- 448 pages
The New Granta Book of Travel
Liz Jobey
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 writers 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.
£12.99
Jonathan Raban's introduction is an overture, weaving themes while underscoring the common elements in many of the collection's 23 pieces ... The New Granta Book of Travel a lethal companion to take to the bedside. You'd never sleep
Scotsman
This inspiring anthology celebrates the genre's literary aspirations, as well as reminding us of the myriad ways in which exploring difference, even for armchair travellers, broadens minds
Independent on Sunday
Lavinia Greenlaw conjures haunting poetry in her piece on the snowbound immensity of the Arctic Circle. John Borneman, an American caught up in the Sri Lanka tsunami over Christmas 2004, gives a knuckle-whitening account of the disaster and its aftermath ... suitable armchair escapism for the New Year
Ian Thomson, Spectator
From the Same Author
Are We Related?
Liz Jobey
Granta magazine has published some of the best writing about family relationships in the English language. Over the years its writers have dealt with the most difficult, the most important and the most personal relationships of their lives. Granta Books’ publication, in 1993, of Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? heralded the huge rise in popularity of the literary memoir, and since then Granta has carried pieces of non-fiction and fiction about the family from writers including Doris Lessing, Jane Anne Phillips, Hanif Kureishi, Jackie Kay, Helen Simpson, Linda Grant, Orhan Pamuk, Graham Swift, Ian Jack, Justine Picardie, Edmund White, Joy Williams, John McGahern, Jon McGregor, Paul Theroux, A. L. Kennedy, Siri Hustvedt and David Goldblatt. The New Granta Book of the Family collects together a stunning variety of pieces about every member of the family.
Liz Jobey on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Are We Related?
Liz Jobey
‘Most family relationships are difficult, and sometimes they can become the most difficult human relationships of all.’
Art & Photography | Granta 91
Family Pictures
Liz Jobey & Robin Grierson
‘Photography always reveals truths about the relationship between the photographer and the person being photographed.’
Essays & Memoir | Granta 91
Lister’s Mill
Liz Jobey
‘The city has defied many plans for its regeneration and its centre is a dispiriting mess’