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.
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.
Granta 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, translated by Frank Wynne
Eliane Brum travels from her home in the Brazilian Amazon to Antarctica in the era of climate crisis, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty
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
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, introduced by Dominic Guerrera
