**A Financial Times Travel Book of the Year 2021**
Where can travel writing go in the twenty-first century? Author and lifelong travel writing aficionado Tim Hannigan sets out in search of this most venerable of genres, hunting down its legendary practitioners and confronting its greatest controversies. Is it ever okay for travel writers to make things up, and just where does the frontier between fact and fiction lie? What actually is travel writing, and is it just a genre dominated by posh white men? What of travel writing's queasy colonial connections? Travelling from Monaco to Eton, from wintry Scotland to sun-scorched Greek hillsides, Hannigan swills beer with the indomitable Dervla Murphy, sips tea with the doyen of British explorers, delves into the diaries of Wilfred Thesiger and Patrick Leigh Fermor, and gains unexpected insights from Colin Thubron, Samanth Subramanian, Kapka Kassabova, William Dalrymple and many others. But along the way he realises how much is at stake: can his own love of travel writing survive this journey? The Travel Writing Tribe tackles head on the fierce critical debates usually confined to strictly academic discussions of the genre. This highly original book compels readers and travellers of all kinds to think about travel writing in new ways.
'[A] deft piece of genre-hopping.' - The Telegraph
'A timely look at the genre - why we travel, and why and how we write about it.' - Irish Independent
'The travel industry might be beginning to emerge from crisis, but travel writing still finds itself on shaky ground, wracked with guilt over carbon emissions and the echoes of colonialism, and with its relevancy (and sales) increasingly challenged by digital alternatives. Hannigan explores the past and searches for a future for the genre, interviewing celebrated practitioners, including Dervla Murphy and William Dalrymple.' - Financial Times (Travel Book of the Year 2021)
'Travel writing used to be dominated by Old Etonians with colonialist tendencies; but [Tim Hannigan's] well-researched critique shows that the 'travellees' are writing back.' - The Guardian
'An excellent and thought-provoking book...what could have been a scholarly theoretical discourse is thoroughly enlivened by Tim Hannigan's decision to turn it into a travel odyssey.' - Times Literary Supplement
'Taking the genre back to its origins...Hannigan turns the concept on its head in his quest to hunt out travel writers themselves.' - Geographical Magazine
