Granta 26: Travel

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #26

by Bill Buford (Editor)

This travel issue is dedicated to the memory of Bruce Chatwin with four unpublished pieces by one of the world’s greatest travel writers. Also in this issue: Ryszard Kapuscinski, John Ryle, Colin Thubron and Timothy Garton Ash, Bill Bryson and Amitav Ghosh.

Genres: Travel, Anthologies, Essays, Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 1989

About the author

William Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to read a collection of stories and essays that were published in 1989, particularly since these had strongly to do with their settings. There is a piece from the Polish writer/journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski about Uganda that takes place during Amin’s regime. It reminded me of the danger the narrator experienced in “The Last King of Scotland.” John Ryle also had Africa as his subject, and he covered Sudan’s civil war doing aid work. He wrote: “I tried to remember why I had come, why I had imagined there was anything I could usefully do or say about these terrible things. I felt sick.”

Bruce Chatwin’s death had occurred before publication of this collection and several of his pieces are here. “On the Road with Mrs. Gandhi” is stunning in its evidence of her in capacities: “in the kitchen, the cook - whom I managed to interview - was shredding documents with an Italian noodle-cutter belonging to Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, Sonia.” Another quote from the same piece: “And even on, sir, in that place you will smell putrefaction and burnt flesh!” Another piece by Chatwin about the exiled Albanian king’s chamberlain who used Chatwin’s art-buying abilities to obtain needed cash when necessary. An entertaining story.

I had a special interest in a story I cannot believe I hadn’t read before by Norman Lewis about southern Thailand, Hat Yai specifically, being brought Western progress in the 1950s in the form of cowboy hats and swinging doors on saloons. Tela Zasloff happened to be in Vietnam during the 1960s doing graduate work and her experiences are noted in “Saigon Dreaming.”

I read Bill Bryson’s tale of Iowa, “More Fat Girls in Des Moines” the same week I read a more recent piece in the New Yorker about Iowa by Larissa MacFarquhar and while Bryson is certain in his story that he never need return to where he grew up, the people of Orange City are very tightly tied to their hometown. Both stories cause a person to reflect on home and the concept of a home town.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger writes delightfully of the European expats in Italy and Patrick Cockburn captures the moments of glasnost in his piece on Moscow.

Solid collection.

[Neil Kenealy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This issue was published just after Bruce Chatwin’s untimely death and is a tribute to him. Granta describes Bruce Chatwin’s definition of travel writing as that which borrows from history, fact and the imagination. Travel writing is today a million different genres because anyone can post a blog or put up a review of an Airbnb experience. Maybe the golden age of travel writing has been democratized and debased.

When reading a 30 year old Granta, it’s interesting to see how many of the articles have stood the test of time. Two pieces that certainly did pass the test of time were Jan Magnus Enzenzberger’s story about Italy and Patrick Cockburn’s recount of his time in Moscow.
However, there are zero contributions from women in this issue of Granta. That is hard to believe for 1989. Was the world that different? Or was it just Granta?

Bruce Chatwin's three pieces combine his love of art collecting from his time working in Sothebys and his ability when travelling to meet the right people. He delves into their history and so puts the place he's travelled into a historical and political context.

Kupicinski is superb at war reportage. This was war correspondence before Twitter and his eyes are the first and maybe only eyes looking at the stories.

John Ryle is an anthropologist who has a great piece on Sudan long before it was divided in two. Sudan was supported by the US because Soviet Union supported Ethiopia because it's still in the middle of the Cold War although Reagan was only barely gone.

Colin Thubron is in North Western China - a long way from Beijing. He describes what it's like filming a simulated lone traveller amongst the Uyghurs in a desert. I always wondered what it's like being on set for a traveller’s solo wandering on screen. Colin Thubron breaks the fourth wall and tells it like it is.

Norman Lewis’s Siam is deliberately using the old name for Thailand because it harks way back. It’s followed by a great piece describing the different factions in Taiwan mainland Chinese Taiwan elites and indigenous. Then there's a reflection of a US academic couple looking back at their 2 year stay in Saigon in 1963/64 before the Vietnam War kicked off. There are two pieces on the USA. One from Bill Bryson which is an extract from his book the Lost Continent.

There are three pieces in Europe. The German writer Jan's Magnus Enzenzberger writes about Italy compared to the North of Europe. Still so relevant today and written 31 years ago. Patrick Cockburns recount of his time in Moscow for Glasnost and Chernobyl is superb

Rian Malan is a South African writer with an extract of Traitors Heart which was published and successful. This was when Nelson Mandela still had a long way to go in Robben island.

If you like travel writing with a dash of historical and political context and you don’t mind going back 30 years, I highly recommend this book.

[Madhula · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read a 1989 publication in 2020, amidst a lockdown, renders a fresh perspective on travel. Through these stories one can see how the concept of travel writing has evolved over the years. This change, attributed especially to Bruce Chatwin, to whom this volume is dedicated, brought to the fore how travel writing does not necessarily mean writing about the place, but by delving into the history of that place and using the power of imagination as well as narrative to talk about it. These are very personal accounts of travel to war zones, places of conflict, sometimes harking up childhood memories, at times borrowing from history.
A must read especially when the word travel brings back memories in times when there are restrictions and/or banned.

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Below par edition. I didn't read a single thing in the first 100 pages and less than half of the rest. The best piece I also didn't read: an extract from Riaan Malan's My Traitor's Heart (I read it already, the whole book that is).

[Dan Tasse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick, interesting read. Starts off the darkest and the best: a short bit about living in Uganda, a bit about the conflict and huge wall in Western Sahara, and terrible stuff about hunger and bureaucracy in Sudan. Also, it's from the 80s; interesting to see how the writers' perspectives differ from ours now. (the story about Vietnam is kind of a trip.)

[Dimuthu De Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book.. Walked through every nook and corner with the authors..