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The new Granta book of travel.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: UK Granta 2012Description: p429ISBN:
  • 9781847083302
DDC classification:
  • 910.4/NEW
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Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
General Books General Books Colombo 910.4/NEW Available

Order online 		CA00007706
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Take a journey in the company of some of the world's finest authors in The New Granta Book of Travel, introduced by Jonathan Raban.

12.99 GBP

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Introduction (p. vii)
  • Arrival (p. 1)
  • The Congo Dinosaur (p. 15)
  • The Road to Ouidah (p. 73)
  • Mississippi Water (p. 86)
  • The Life and Death of a Homosexual (p. 119)
  • The Serampur Scotch (p. 139)
  • Siberia (p. 146)
  • How It Ends (p. 175)
  • Going Abroad (p. 185)
  • The Lazy River (p. 215)
  • Lovely Girls, Very Cheap (p. 224)
  • Dervishes (p. 250)
  • Trespass (p. 268)
  • When I Was Lost (p. 273)
  • Captain Scott's Biscuit (p. 286)
  • This Is Centerville (p. 303)
  • Osama's War (p. 323)
  • Airds Moss (p. 347)
  • Sri Lanka: December 28, 2004 (p. 361)
  • Nightwalking (p. 369)
  • The Paris Intifada (p. 377)
  • Kashmir's Forever War (p. 395)
  • Arctic (p. 413)
  • Contributors (p. 419)
  • Permissions (p. 427)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

MISSISSIPPI WATER by Jonathan Raban Flying to Minneapolis from the West, you see it as a theological problem. The great flat farms of Minnesota are laid out in a ruled grid, as empty of surprises as a sheet of graph paper. Every gravelled path, every ditch has been projected along the latitude and longitude lines of the township-and-range-survey system. The farms are square, the fields are square, the houses are square; if you could pluck their roofs off from over people's heads, you'd see families sitting at square tables in the dead centre of square rooms. Nature has been stripped, shaven, drilled, punished and repressed in this right-angled, right-thinking Lutheran country. It makes you ache for the sight of a rebellious curve or the irregular, dappled colour of a field where a careless farmer has allowed corn and soybeans to cohabit. But there are no careless farmers on this flight path. The landscape is open to your inspection - as to God's - as an enormous advertisement for the awful rectitude of the people. There are no funny goings-on down here, it says; we are plain upright folk, fit candidates for heaven. Then the river enters the picture - a broad serpentine shadow that sprawls unconformably across the checkerboard. Deviously winding, riddled with black sloughs and green cigar-shaped islands, the Mississippi looks as if it had been put here to teach the god-fearing Midwest a lesson about stubborn and unregenerate nature. Like John Calvin's bad temper, it presents itself as the wild beast in the heart of the heartland. Excerpted from The New Granta Book of Travel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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