Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing

by Tabish Khair (Editor), Justin D. Edwards (Editor), Martin Leer (Editor)

". . . brings new insights into the colonial relationship while challenging the unspoken temptation that this was a distinctly European period." ―Simon Gikandi

Other Routes collects important primary work by travel writers from Asia and Africa in English translation. An introduction by Tabish Khair discusses travel literature as a genre, the perception of travel and writing about travel as a European privilege, and the emergence of new writings that show that travel has been a human occupation that crosses time and culture. This original and significant book will interest armchair travelers and others in views of people and places away from the European traveler's gaze.

Selections include "The Travels of a Japanese Monk" (c. 838), "Al-Abdari, the Disgruntled Traveller" (c. 1290), "A Korean Official's Account of China" (1488), "The Poetry of Basho's Road" (1689), " A Love-Hate Affair with the British" (1890).

Genres: Travel, History, Asia, Africa, Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Tabish Khair was born and educated in Bihar, India. He worked in Delhi as a Staff Reporter until his late twenties and is now a professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. Winner of the All India Poetry Prize, his novels have been shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize (Hong Kong), the Hindu Best Fiction Prize and the Crossword Vodafone Literature Awards (India), the Encore Award (UK) and for translation prizes in Denmark and France.

Reviews

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been reading it, on and off, for months and finally finished it.
Like almost all anthologies, some pieces are extraordinary, interesting, enlightening, make you stand up and go get the original, and some are extremely dull and boring.
In any case, it is a good editorial effort, locating all these narratives and putting them all together.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I searched for a book like this for several years, and finally realized that it hadn’t been published yet. Other Routes is a little too ambitious to be fully successful, but I’ll give it an A for effort. There should be more anthologies like this one!

[Tito Quiling, Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to read through historical travelogues that are not Western-centric, since knowing Ibn Battuta's travel writings made me even more interested in checking out this title. However, the book can be fragmented in its different chapters, which is divided into written accounts focusing on studies of other cultures, pilgrimages, autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries, and of course, travel accounts. By zeroing in on Asian and African travel writers, this could have used key works instead of picking out available ones to create more cohesion and have a streamlined theme for this collection.

[Qwerty88 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wish this could have been longer