From Antarctica and the deserts of the US-Mexico border, to a Siberian whale-killing station and the alleyways of Taipei, these dispatches describe a world in perpetual motion (even when it is 'locked-down'). To travel, we are reminded, is to embrace the experience of being a stranger - to acknowledge that one person's frontier is another's home.
In 1984
Granta
published its first issue devoted to travel writing. Nearly forty years after that genre-defining volume, a new generation of writers from around the globe offers a new vision of what travel writing can be.
157 is guest-edited by award-winning travel writer
William Atkins
. It features:
Jason Allen-Paisant
remembers the trees of his childhood Jamaica from his home in Leeds
Carlos Manuel Alvarez
navigates Cuba's customs system
Eliane Brum
travels from her home in the Brazilian Amazon to Antarctica in the era of climate crisis
Francisco Cantu
and
Javier Zamora
: a former border guard travels to the US-Mexico border with a former undocumented migrant who crossed the border as a child
Jennifer Croft
's richly illustrated essay on postcards and graffiti, inspired by Los Angeles
Bathsheba Demuth
visits a whale-hunting station on the Bering Strait, Russia
Sinead Gleeson
visits Brazil with Clarice Lispector
Kate Harris
with the Tinglit people of the Taku River basin, Alaska
Artist
Roni Horn
on Iceland
Emmanuel Iduma
returns to Lagos in his late father's footsteps, Nigeria
Kapka Kassabova
among the gatherers of the ancient Mesta River, Bulgaria
Taran Khan
with Afghan migrants in Germany and Kabul
Jessica J. Lee
in the alleyways of Taipei, Taiwan, in search of her mother's home
Sven Lindqvist
in the Mauritanian Sahara in 1987 - a previously unpublished essay by the late icon of travel writing
Ben Mauk
among the volcanoes of Duterte's Philippines
Pascale Petit
tracks tigers in Paris and India
Photographer
James Tylor
on the legacy of whaling in Indigenous South Australia