by Jeffrey M. Freedman

Travel writing serves the indispensable need to transport readers, through vivid description and narratives, to foreign locales that they have either not been able to visit, or are preparing to visit and want to know more about. Generic travel books appeal to the traveling herd, the voyagers who just want to know how to find the Eiffel Tower and a motel with air conditioning. Truly effective travel essays, on the other hand, offer us the opportunity to see unfamiliar territory (whether ordinary or exotic) through the eyes of those who are more observant, more thoughtful, and, hopefully, smarter than we. Skilled travel writers write for themselves. In the process, however, they also write for us in a way which allows a voyeuristic glimpse of country, town and city, through the senses of someone who might or might not share our world view and travel objectives. What matters is that we are getting an honest, unique sense of the immediacy of place.

All of the essays in this collection provide this. Series editor Jason Wilson searched for the rare pieces that weren’t “aggressively positive”; Jamaica Kincaid chose finalists who succeeded in “underlining my sense of displacement.” Both succeeded.

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