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On the Road: International Writing on Travel

January 2020

January-2020-Travel-Writing-David-Thuku-Untitled-XI-Motion

Image: David Thuku, “Untitled XI (Motion),” paper cuts on paper, 2019, One Off Gallery, Nairobi. Courtesy of One Off Gallery and the artist.

This month we’ve traveled back in time and through our archives to bring you compelling international tales of journeys. Writers from nine countries document their own trips or send characters on their ways to destinations ranging from Corsican cemeteries to Indian train stations. W. G. Sebald climbs to a ruined graveyard and meditates on death and remembrance. Witold Gombrowicz embarks on a dyspeptic turn through Argentina, while Gabriela Wiener takes multiple sorts of trips. György Dragomán dispatches a desperate couple on a new form of transit. Subodh Ghosh and Peter Weber find dramatic surprises in train stations. Laila Stien tracks a seasonal migration turned tragic, while cartoonist Liniers records a cheerful car trip through Eastern Canada. And Gabriella Ghermandi’s harried narrator discovers she can go home again.

Road Stories: International Writing on Travel

By Susan Harris

Some of the writers here document their own trips, while others invent characters and send them on the road.

Campo Santo

By W. G. Sebald

The dead were thought of as extremely touchy, envious, vengeful, quarrelsome, and cunning.

Translated from German by Anthea Bell

A Trip through Ayahuasca

By Gabriela Wiener

It is said after the vomiting comes the visions. I wasn’t seeing anything yet.

Translated from Spanish by Lucas Aznar Miles

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Two reindeer on a rocky ledge with a body of water behind them

Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash

Journey toward the Island

Norway’s Laila Stien tracks a group of Sámi herders guiding their reindeer on the seasonal migration to the north, fighting obstacles both natural and man-made.

Translated from Norwegian by Kerri Pierce

From “Peregrinations in Argentina”

By Witold Gombrowicz

At first we feel hatred toward other tourists—but eventually we begin to hate the tourist in us.

Translated from Polish by Danuta Borchardt

Haul

By György Dragomán

“The bears are tame, I broke them in myself.”

Translated from Hungarian by Paul Olchváry

The House of Wax

By Subodh Ghosh

“Have you been able to forget me?”

Translated from Bengali by Somrita Ganguly

Fish Television

I was clouds transforming, a sinking billow.

Translated from German by Anne Posten

The Neighborhood Phone

By Gabriella Ghermandi

For seventeen years I had dreamed of what my return to my country would be like.

Translated from Italian by Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi & Victoria Offredi Poletto

Does International Literature Make Us Better Travelers?

On the “Good” in “Good Traveler”

By Shahnaz Habib

Travel is a self-improvement project that has been sold to us as a world-improvement project.

We Usually Ask Literature to Be Humanizing Only When It’s from “Over There”

By M. Lynx Qualey

Our dignified survival as a species probably depends on finding ways to listen to each other.

The Desire to Travel Responsibly Must Come before the Desire to Learn through Literature

By Tomaso Biancardi

There is a surer way for international literature to make us better tourists.

The Reader’s Openness to the Unfamiliar

By Emmanuel Iduma

When we ask whether international literature can make us better travelers, who are the supposed beneficiaries?