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← Back to all issuesGranta 138: Journeys
Winter 2017
What are the ethics of writing about a place you visit only briefly and view as an outsider? With Granta’s long tradition of travel writing in mind, we ask some of the world’s best writers: is travel writing dead?
From this Issue
|Granta 138
Vinyl Road Trip
David Flusfeder
After an unexpected email, David Flusfeder heads to Detroit to discover his father’s history and the world of vinyl manufacturing.
|Granta 138
Lindsey Hilsum | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Lindsey Hilsum
‘We need a new genre of travel writing, gleaned from the stories refugees and migrants.’
|Granta 138
Samanth Subramanian | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Samanth Subramanian
‘The first time I ever visited a place I’d read about in a travel book was when my family took a holiday in Hong Kong in 1993.’
|Granta 138
Another Great Leap
Justin Jin & A Yi
‘A man will only return to his birthplace in the countryside when he is dead. This is our reality.’
|Granta 138
Well Done, No. 3777!
Xiaolu Guo
‘I grew up in the semi-tropical south, dotted by wet paddy fields, but I always wanted to go to the north.’
|Granta 138
On the Road
Janine di Giovanni
‘But I still get homesick, that vast and deep pit in the stomach, every time I go away.’
|Granta 138
Alexis Wright | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Alexis Wright
‘In my imagination I have been to many villages and cities in the world.’
|Granta 138
Colin Thubron | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Colin Thubron
‘The death of travel – and of the travel book – has been predicted for almost a century.’
|Granta 138
Re-Entry
Andrew McConnell & Adam Marek
‘I wanted to see a human’s expression after returning from space.’
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Old School
Xan Rice
‘Apartheid had marked him, as it has marked all of us, in different ways. It made me hyper-aware of colour.’
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Pico Iyer | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Pico Iyer
‘The writer on place has to go further inward, into the realm of silence and nuance and personal enquiry.’
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Mohsin Hamid | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Mohsin Hamid
‘I have come to believe that we are all migrants, that the experience of migration unites all human beings.’
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Rana Dasgupta | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Rana Dasgupta
‘This is a literature of checkpoints and fences, and the improvised gaps through which desperate people pass.’
|Granta 138
Higher Ground
Carl De Keyzer
‘These photographs capture that fatal boredom in the face of this slow-motion catastrophe.’
|Granta 138
Hoa Nguyen | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Hoa Nguyen
‘I didn’t have the language for why I could not be a tourist in the same way as my white counterparts.’
|Granta 138
Eliza Griswold | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Eliza Griswold
‘Even in its subtler forms, the act of looking is an act of self-regard.’
|Granta 138
Tara Bergin | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Tara Bergin
‘If you laugh and tell me I am only speaking metaphorically, I will reply: what other way do you expect me to speak?’
