08.6.2008 | 4:47 am | Travel Writers
If you’ve travelled anywhere in the world, the chances are that you’ve used a Lonely Planet guide. The largest travel guide book company in the world, Lonely Planet publishes around 500 titles in eight languages, and sells up to six million guidebooks a year. So what’s the history behind this iconic brand?
The first in the Lonely Planet series was Across Asia on the Cheap, written and published in Sydney in 1973 by Tony Wheeler, a London Business School graduate, and his wife Maureen. They wrote the guide after a long trip through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and India. The book was well-written, informative and opinionated, which attracted a huge following. It sold enough copies in Australia to allow the Wheelers to expand it into South-East Asia on a Shoestring. This soon became a bible for travellers in that part of the world, and is still a popular title.
Lonely Planet’s early books were aimed at young people from Australia and Europe treading the hippie trail through South-East Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. The series grew along with the developing gap year market, and popularity was spread via word of mouth.
Over the years Lonely Planet’s clientele has expanded from just backpackers to older, more affluent travellers. In September 2007 the company was purchased by BBC Worldwide, with the Wheelers keeping a 25% stake in the company.
When asked about the name of the company, Tony explains that it comes from a misheard line in the Joe Cocker song ‘Space Captain’. The lyric is actually ‘lovely planet’, but Tony thought it was ‘lonely planet’ and loved it.
Despite great success, Lonely Planet hasn’t been without controversy. Many people blame the books for an influx of tourists to remote areas which leads to disturbance and destruction of local culture. However, Lonely Planet counters this by saying that it’s up to travellers themselves how they conduct themselves.
Earlier this year, Lonely Planet was involved in scandal once again when writer Thomas Kohnstamm admitted that he made up large sections of his books. He contributed to a guide to Colombia without even visiting the country. However, after a review of Kohnstamm’s books, publisher Piers Pickard found no inaccuracies.
Controversy aside, Lonely Planet remains a firm favourite for travelling folk looking for a guide. Pack one in your suitcase next time you fly.
Find cheap flights to world destinations at FlightComparison.co.uk.
07.30.2008 | 11:30 am | Travel Writers
Of the Durrell brothers, it is Lawrence who is the best known. The elder Durrell is famous for his illustrious writing credits including his stunning Alexandria Quartet of novels. However, Lawrence’s younger brother Gerald was a great author in his own right.
While never reaching the literary heights of his elder brother, Gerald wrote several books of note, most on his favourite topics - animals and conservation.
The Durrells were children of the Raj. Gerald, along with his siblings, was born in India in the 1920s and grew up on the Greek island of Corfu. It was here that Gerald wrote his most well-known and best loved book, My Family and Other Animals.
It is Gerald’s love of Corfu’s flora and fauna that is the premise for the book, along with the antics of his family. What makes the book so successful is the childlike wonderment with which it is written. Gerald pays attention to the details of his surroundings, bringing Corfu to life. Anyone who has read the book will remember the family’s hilariously morbid maid, Lugubria, and the wise Dr. Stephanides who helps them settle in to island life. The book is peppered with funny, interesting and moving incidents, such as Gerald’s sister Margo falling ill after kissing the feet of St Spiridon…
Gerald followed My Family and Other Animals with two further books about his time in Corfu - Birds, Beasts and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods.
While not a travel writer as such, Gerald Durrell writes so beautifully about Corfu that it tempts the reader to visit.
Discover Gerald Durrell’s Corfu – find cheap flights at FlightComparison.co.uk.
07.16.2008 | 11:03 am | Travel Writers
The writing industry is renowned for being incredibly difficult to break into, so some writers decide that the only way to get their work out there is by self publishing. Often this amounts to little more than a crate of books to give to your nearest and dearest, and the pride of seeing your work in print, but for one writer it was the beginning of a highly successful career.
Stephen Clarke’s novel A Year in The Merde was published in 2004 through his Red Garage Books website. He printed 200 copies along with a murder mystery and a book about teleportation. A Year in The Merde became popular in Paris through word of mouth and was reviewed by a French newspaper. Thanks to the novel’s runaway success, Clarke sold the rights to Transworld in the UK, Bloomsbury in the USA and Penguin in Canada. It was published in French under Nil Editions as God Save La France.
The novel’s name is a play on Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence and alludes to the amount of dog excrement the author witnessed on the streets of Paris. The book tells the story of Paul West, an Englishman who sets up home in Paris. He is under orders to set up an English-style tearoom by his boss, a rich businessman. Despite chaotic times and many misunderstandings, Paul meets Alexa and manages to fall in love.
Clarke followed up with a sequel, Merde Actually, in 2005, charting Paul’s further adventures, and a third instalment is due out later this year.
His continuing fascination with France led to his penning Talk to the Snail in 2006, which is a survivor’s guide to the French language and people.
Before becoming a publishing phenomenon thanks to the Merde books, Clarke was a comedy writer. He wrote sketches for BBC Radio 4 and material for a stand-up comedian as well as comic-book stories for the American cartoonist Gilbert Shelton. He worked in Glasgow as a bilingual lexicographer for HarperCollins before moving to Paris to work for a French press group. He has lived there for more than a decade.
If you’ve read the Merde books and want to see Paris for yourself, check FlightComparison.co.uk for the cheapest flights.
07.9.2008 | 10:05 am | Travel Writers
With China in the headlines in the run up to the Olympics, we’ve decided to dedicate this week’s travel writer profile to a man who risks his life for his literature.
Ma Jian is infamous in his home country for penning works which the Chinese government believes are defamatory to Communism and the People’s Republic.
He was born in Qingdao in 1953 and began writing at a young age. It wasn’t long before his work came to the attention of the government and he was forced to move to Hong Kong in 1986 after some of his stories were banned. He left China for good in 1997 and lived in Germany for two years before moving to England.
Ma’s book Red Dust is possibly his most famous work. It won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award 2002 and tells of Ma’s three year trip around China following his escape from charges of spiritual pollution in Beijing. Leaving his wife and child, he trekked through the wildernesses of the country, surviving on money earned from odd jobs. His accounts of his adventures are colourful – at one point he finds himself in a desert with no water for three days; elsewhere he is forced to mug some muggers to reclaim his stolen camera.
Some say that Red Dust deserves a place in the pantheon of Chinese literature along with The Mountain Village and Wild Swans. It is at once a travel book and an account of one man’s escape from the culture which seeks to silence his honesty.
Ma moved to fiction for The Noodle Maker, a story of a strange friendship between a political propagandist and a professional blood donor.
Ma’s short story collection Stick Out Your Tongue was translated into English in 2006. In each story Ma presents an aspect of life in Tibet, but does not laud Tibetan culture. It was his honest, often raw portrayal of the territory that led to the collection being banned in China.
Ma’s latest book Beijing Coma was published in the UK in 2008. It is the fictional account of a political activist’s life after the events of Tiananmen Square.
Despite attempts at censorship by the Chinese government, Ma Jian refuses to be silenced and his works are read by millions across the globe.
Today Ma lives in London with his partner and translator, Flora Drew.
See China for yourself. Find cheap flights at FlightComparison.co.uk.
07.2.2008 | 7:17 am | Travel Writers
Over the past few years you’ve probably seen people on the train reading a weighty red and green tome with a silhouetted temple on the cover – maybe you’ve read it yourself. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts has become a publishing sensation since its release in 2003. The epic tale of escaped bank robber Lin has enthralled readers and travel lovers for nearly five years. Its appeal looks set to continue with Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan signing to star in the film adaptation due for release in 2009.
So what’s the story behind the elusive Roberts and his magnum opus?
Little is known about Gregory David Roberts’ early life. He was born in Australia in 1952 and became addicted to heroin in the ‘70s. In 1978 he was jailed for 19 years for a chain of armed robberies on building societies, shops and banks which he committed with a toy gun. He escaped from Victoria’s maximum security Pentridge prison in 1980 and went to the top of Australia’s most wanted list. He spent some time in New Zealand before moving to Mumbai where he joined the mafia. He lived as a fugitive until 1990 when he was caught and jailed in Frankfurt. He was sent back to Australia to serve six further years, two of which were in solitary confinement. It was during these years that Roberts decided to document his life in India. According to rumour, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after the first two copies were destroyed in prison.
The novel’s title comes from the name given to the narrator by his friend Prabaker’s mother, and means ‘peace of Lord Rama’. Prabaker is one of the most colourful characters in the book. When Lin arrives in Mumbai following his escape from jail, Prabaker offers to be his guide and helps him settle in. The two are soon inseparable and Prabaker become a ubiquitous figure as the narrative progresses. One of the themes running through the novel is hope, seen most clearly in Lin’s pursuit of beautiful, complicated ex-pat Karla Saaranen.
Shantaram is based mostly in Mumbai where Lin sets up a health centre in the slum, becomes involved with the local mafia under the guidance of crime chief Khader Bhai, and serves a stint in Arthur Road prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Towards the end of the book Lin joins the mujahideen fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.
What makes Shantaram so compelling is the reality of the characters and places Roberts describes. Although it’s unclear exactly how much of the narrative is fact and how much is fiction, Roberts’ talent as a writer means that every scene breathes with life. Whether he’s depicting the slums of Mumbai or the barren hills of Afghanistan, he captures the sights, sounds and feel of his environment.
Roberts has said that he plans to write three more novels about his life before and after the events of Shantaram, so the mysteries of this enigmatic man may soon be revealed.
Want to see Mumbai for yourself? Find the cheapest flights on FlightComparison.co.uk.
06.18.2008 | 10:48 am | Travel Writers
If you’re looking for a book which will deliver a good dose of laughs along with some old-fashioned travel writing, pick up a Bill Bryson. His career spans a decade and takes readers from the backwoods of America to the dusty plains of Australia via Europe and Africa.
Bill McGuire Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1951, the son of sports journalist William Bryson. He studied at Drake University but dropped out to spend four months backpacking around Europe. This trip provided some of the material for his 1991 book Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, and introduced his one-time buddy Stephen Katz - who would be Bryson’s greatest comic creation were he not 100% real.
Bryson moved to England in 1977 with his wife Cynthia and began his journalistic career writing for The Times and The Independent. It was during his time in the UK that Neither Here Nor There and The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America were written. Bryson wrote Notes on a Small Island on leaving Britain in 1995 as a memory of the country he was leaving behind. While his other books had been successful, it was this one which catapulted him to international acclaim.
Bryson’s other works from the 90s include A Walk in the Woods (1998) in which Bill recruits his old friend Steven Katz to join him hiking the Appalachian Trail. Notes from a Big Country, also published in 1998, was a collection of Bryson’s newspaper columns charting his return to the USA after many years away. He began the millennium with Down Under, an account of his trip to Australia, followed by Bill Bryson’s African Diary in 2002 for which all profits went to CARE International.
It’s Bryson’s love of the absurd that makes his writing so entertaining. Wherever he goes he will always come face to face with a city’s strangest characteristic, or become embroiled with the town’s most recalcitrant hotelier. His self-designed persona of the unfortunate, slightly baffled klutz makes for some laugh-out-loud moments, such as the following exchange with a waitress in Aachen in Neither Here Nor There:
“My waitress spoke no English at all and I had the most extraordinary difficulty getting myself understood. I asked for a beer and she looked at me askance.
‘Wass? Tier?’
‘Nein, beer,’ I said, and her puzzlement grew.
‘Fear? Steer? Queer? King Leer?’
‘Nein, nein, beer.’ I pointed at the menu.
‘Ah, beer,’ she said, with a private tut, as if I had been intentionally misleading her.’”
What is particularly appealing about Bryson is his uniquely unpretentious view of travelling. He quips “What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.” This is Bryson all over - a deadpan view of a concept that most travel writers treat with hushed reverence.
Bryson’s use of hyperbole is another ingredient in his comic success. Of a bus ride in Scandinavia he writes “I have seldom been more certain that I was about to die. The man drove as if we were in an arcade game”.
What makes Bryson’s career even more impressive is that travel writing is not his only forte. He has written three excellent books on the English language - Mother Tongue in 1990, Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1994) and Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002). In 2003 he tried his hand at science with A Short History of Nearly Everything, followed in 2006 by his memoirs, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, charting his Midwestern upbringing.
Bill Bryson is an all-rounder, but it is his travel writing that sets him apart. Read a Bryson book and you’ll be laughing long after you’ve turned the last page.
06.10.2008 | 11:33 am | Travel Writers
by Susie Gordon
Go into the travel section of any bookshop and you’ll be faced with shelves upon shelves of travel books. How do you know which will be entertaining, factual, interesting, well written? It’s a saturated market, but if you choose a book by William Dalrymple you can’t go wrong.
Dalrymple is best known for his historical accounts of the Mughal Empire but his earlier works are pure travel. His first, In Xanadu, was written in 1981 while he was still at university. It charts his epic quest to track Marco Polo’s journey from Jerusalem to Mongolia, and is made all the more impressive by the fact that Dalrymple was only 22 when he wrote it.
A country dear to Dalrymple’s heart is India. He wrote City of Djinns following a six year stay in New Delhi during the 1990s, and penned The Age of Kali in 1998 - a collection of essays charting his travels around the subcontinent. As a topic, India has been done to death by travel writers but Dalrymple’s books stand out for their honest, intelligent portraits and eminently readable style.
What sets Dalrymple apart is the way he mixes autobiographical and often humourous narrative with erudite historical detail. You never feel as if you’re in a history lecture, such is his talent for making bland facts leap from the page in vibrant technicolour. You come away from a William Dalrymple book feeling both intellectually nourished and entertained - surely a sign of an expert travel writer.
Dalrymple was born William Hamilton-Dalrymple in 1965, the son of Virginia Woolf’s cousin, Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple. Cambridge educated, he is married to the artist Olivia Fraser and has three children. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Literature.
