Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- ‘Travelogue’
- 1 Introduction: the global imaginary of contemporary travel writing
- 2 Between fact and fiction: the generic boundaries of travel writing
- 3 The cosmopolitan gaze: rearticulations of modern subjectivity
- 4 Civilising territory: geographies of safety and danger
- 5 Looking back: utopia, nostalgia and the myth of historical progress
- 6 Engaging the political: contemporary travel writing and the ethics of difference
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- ‘Travelogue’
- 1 Introduction: the global imaginary of contemporary travel writing
- 2 Between fact and fiction: the generic boundaries of travel writing
- 3 The cosmopolitan gaze: rearticulations of modern subjectivity
- 4 Civilising territory: geographies of safety and danger
- 5 Looking back: utopia, nostalgia and the myth of historical progress
- 6 Engaging the political: contemporary travel writing and the ethics of difference
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I remember the exact moment this book began. I was sitting in a café in Saigon (sounds glamorous – it wasn't). It was April 1993 and I was chatting with other like-minded backpackers from Canada, Australia and Germany. We were revelling in our self-importance and congratulating ourselves that we got to Vietnam before the other travellers spoiled it. Embarrassingly, I think we honestly felt that we were the first Westerners in Saigon since the war ended. In any case, I wanted to trade a novel I had finished – Milan Kundera's The Joke – and an American fellow offered me Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania in return. I had never read a travelogue before, but I eagerly exchanged books. I thought Theroux would inspire me on my impending solo journey through Asia and Africa. It was, and I stick to this judgement, one of the worst books I have ever read – boring, nasty and offensive in equal measure. The problem was that I didn't have a critical language to express my distaste. Intuitively, I knew this wasn't just a bad book; there was something wrong with this book and something wrong with travel writing in general. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that there was also something wrong with my own rite of passage as a smug Western backpacker. Over a decade later, this is the result.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing , pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006