Travel Worlds

Travel Worlds:
Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics

Edited by Raminder Kaur
and John Hutnyk
Zed books, London 1999.

Pb ISBN 1 85649 562 0 Price UK£13.95/US$22.50
(see below for ordering details)
(cover photo Karoki Lewis)

Everyone's got a traveller's tale,
but TRAVEL WORLDS tells them with a sting:

African-American musicians head East for Kung-Fu kicks while
paedophiles go for cheap sex pilgrimage; Western bible-bashers adopt
missionary positions in India while heroic Saint George signs on as
an Arab soldier in Britain; the scars of Partition mock the protocols
of transit, while nomadic insurgents resist the Bangladeshi nation
state with lyrical persuasion; Kula Shaker and Madonna trinketize the
'Orient' while dead tourists exchange values with travelling
'terrorists'; British Mirpuris and Black women travel back to the 'Old
Country' and beyond in ways that are not quite as they seem; and
ethnographers collide with tourists in the carousel of Goa's resorts.

Including poetry and fiction alongside academic essays, this book
refuses simplistic dichotomies of north/south and east/west and
confronts head on existing conventions of writing about travel in
post-colonial, literary and cultural studies. In so doing, it sheds
new light on:

- the shortcomings of border theories and nation-state parameters

- the politics of diasporic and transnational travels

- the relations between tourism and terrorism

- the limitations of 'alternative' tourism

TRAVEL WORLDS plots the politics of diverse journeys;
it is 'something of a travel guide,
something of a hold-all backpack,
and something of another compass'.

`Travel Words dares you to embark on a variety of journeys
simultaneously-from magical-mystical tours that promise to fulfil the
private fantasies of jaded tourists and eager missionaries to new
journeys across old borders that have become terribly real by virtue
of being more psychological than territorial. This collection explores
exciting psycho-geographical spaces through journeys that somewhere
along the way become journeys into the self.' - Ashis Nandy.

Ordering details:
In Europe order from Zed books, 7 Cynthia St, London N1 9JF, UK
tel +44 (0)171 837 4014/8466 email: FAROUK@zedbooks.demon.co.uk
In Australia and elsewhere order from our friends at Manic Ex-Posuer: books@manic - http://www.manic.com.au/
In the US: Order from St Martins Press, Scholarly & Reference
Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
tel (212) 982 3900/fax (212) 777 6359 Contact Peter Burrell email: peterburrell@stmartins.com