This fabulous selection of the most enduring pieces from Granta's first thirty-five issues voyages from Eastern Europe to Essex, Uganda to Des Moines without a single shrieking gear-change; the writing is simply so good that whether these people are writing, as Christopher Hitchens does, about a journey into the dying embers of Ceausescu's Romania or, as Paul Theroux does, about the insanity of the New York subways, the reader is instantly transported as appropriate. There is humour in the extract from Redmond O'Han lon's hilarious visit to an SAS training camp in preparation for his visit to Borneo, and danger in Nicholas Shakespeare's flirtation with Sendero Luminoso terrorists in Peru; best of all is Isabel Hilton's superbly-written, supremely human account of her search for the deposed Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner. Good value, too, at 400 paperback pages.
