Other Routes

Reviews / Votes

"The editors offer 33 carefully excerpted travel accounts that range chronologically from the 5th century CE . . . to the late 19th century . . . . The volume includes a literary foreword by Amitav Ghosh and a lucid and scholarly introduction by Khair. Each of these highly readable travel accounts is preceded by an informative editorial overview that looks at the traveler, the land through which the traveler journeys, and the purpose of travel (commerce, enlightenment, conversion, etc.). . . . Highly recommended."-Choice
"Hoping to mitigate the almost total erasure of non-European travel accounts that results in a Eurocentric view of the globe, Khair (Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark) and his fellow editors showcase travel writing by international travelers of Asian and African origin. The editors offer 33 carefully excerpted travel accounts that range chronologically from the 5th century CE (Three Chinese Scholars Go 'West' to India) to the late 19th century (Malabari: A Love-Hate Affair with the British). They organize these writings under broad categories: pilgrimages, studies, autobiographies, diaries, and memoirs, and travel accounts. Although many of these extracts will be well known to scholars of travel literature-e.g., the writings of Olaudah Equiano, Sake Dean Mahomed, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, and Matsuo Basho-numerous others are relatively unknown in the West and appear in some cases for the first time in English. The volume includes a literary foreword by Amitav Ghosh and a lucid and scholarly introduction by Khair. Each of these highly readable travel accounts is preceded by an informative editorial overview that looks at the traveler, the land through which the traveler journeys, and the purpose of travel (commerce, enlightenment, conversion, etc.). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. -Choice, Nov. 2006"-M. W. Cox, University of Pittsburgh