From journeys around Iran to wild times in Bangkok and travels around Dublin, Laurence Mackinrambles through some of the best travel writing on the shelves
Travels with a Typewriter: A Reporter at Large
By Michael Frayn
Faber £8.99
Michael Frayn is a refined journalist with an elegant turn of phrase. Like most good journalists, he tries to keep himself out of the articles he writes, but in these collected travel pieces, his presence is tangible and appreciated.
One of the toughest tasks for any travel writer is to build a connection between the place they are in and the attitudes of the readers at home.
The language here is taut and polished, and even though Frayn writes with the lightest of touches, there is always the sense of a measured hand at the tiller.
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah’s Beard
By Nicholas Jubber
Da Capo Press, £9.99
This is an extraordinary travelogue that feels like it is shifting through time as well as space.
Nicholas Jubber roams the Middle East with the Shahnameh( Book of Kings), an 11th-century Persian epic poem, as his guide. Jubber goes completely native in the book, and it is all the stronger for it, as he does an impeccable job of plumbing the bewilderingly intricate depths of Iranian society.
Definitely one to change attitudes about a largely misunderstood country.
Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993
By Paul Bowles
Sort Of Books, £14.99
Paul Bowles is best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky, but his travel writing deserves just as much praise. This new collection is filled with his confident strokes of language, brilliantly realised passages of colour, intelligence and wit.
Morocco and the Left Bank of the Seine take up the lion’s share of the pages, with its assortment of hawkers and bohemian artists – what’s the difference? – making this as good a two-hander as you are likely to find.
Zimbabwe
By Philip Barclay
Bloomsbury, £17.99
Not all travel articles have to glorify their subjects. Philip Barclay is a British diplomat, who lived and worked in Zimbabwe from 2006 to 2009, and this is essentially a focused political history of the country and a disturbing portrait of how it has been destroyed, with the occasional glimmer of hope for change. Powerful stuff indeed, if as cheerful as a four-year economic plan.
Map Addict
By Mike Parker
Collins, £8.99
When Mike Parker was a teenager, he would head down to the shops for a regular shoplift – but it was ordnance surveys he was pinching. His fascination with maps appears to verge on the fetishistic – a relief map of the Severn Hills is “like the brassiere of some 50s Hollywood starlet, all swaggering panache and perky promise”, but he is thankfully aware of the extent of his addiction and tempers it with plenty of dry wit and bright observations. A real pleasure to wander through.
Slow Dublin
By Anto Howard
Affirm Press, €14.95
Sometimes a guide to the places most familiar to you can have you looking at your own surroundings in a whole new light.
This book celebrates the local charm and tradition of the city. The emphasis is on taking moments to appreciate the parts you see every day, such as the old Guinness flaking plant – the white, windowless and defunct sliver of modernism that dominates the quays en route to Heuston Station – or the abandoned diving bell on the quays, a 90-ton monster that was plunged into the waters of the Liffey loaded with men, who built the North Wall extension in 1869.
This is a book well worth losing a bit of time to. Pints are optional.
The Natural Navigator
By Tristan Gooley
Virgin, £14.99
Map fans, look away now. This book explains how to find your way around the world by relying on your senses of sight and smell (and, in one sea captain’s experience, taste) and on the indicators all around us, both natural and man-made.
This is fascinating mix of history, myth, folklore and fact, with plenty of pleasing diversions along the way.
If the subject matter seems a touch boy scouty, don’t be put off. Gooley’s passion is well structured, with scores of anecdotes keeping the pages turning over.
Bangkok Days
By Lawrence Osborne
Vintage, £8.99
Lawrence Osborne is a gifted writer who dexterously evokes this tumultuous city.
This book will probably offend swathes of readers, but Osborne is not here to defend some of his more dubious behaviour in a city not known for its morality. This is a wild book, complex and humming with unapologetic authenticity and experience.
It is a vivid and rewarding read that is unlikely to make Osborne many friends but should certainly win him many readers.
Chinese Whispers: A Journey into Betrayal
By Jan Wong
Atlantic Books, £8.99
Jan Wong arrives in Beijing in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as a committed Maoist, and promptly pitched in to do her bit for the cause.
However, she betrays a fellow student and, decades later, returns to try and track down that student and make amends. Some of the incidents here are a little flat on the page, but it is a comprehensive and engaging whole that goes a long way towards explaining the mystery of modern China and casts an irreverent eye over its furious rush to progress.
Travels in Siberia
By Ian Frazier
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, £18.91
What can you find to write about in an area famed for having nothing? Oh the usual – abandoned gulags, dozens of statues of Lenin, medieval cities, tension, violence, history and that Russian sensibility that generations of writers have been trying to put on the page for centuries.
Skilful, dry observation with a bolt of dark humour. Well, what did you expect? This is Russia after all.
