Other Routes 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing [Paperback]

... brings new insights into the colonial relationship while challenging the unspoken temptation that this was a distinctly European period. Simon Gikandi

Other Routes collects important primary work by travel writers from Asia and Africa in English translation. An introduction by Tabish Khair discusses travel literature as a genre, the perception of travel and writing about travel as a European privilege, and the emergence of new writings that show that travel has been a human occupation that crosses time and culture. This original and significant book will interest armchair travelers and others in views of people and places away from the European travelers gaze.

Selections include The Travels of a Japanese Monk (c. 838), Al-Abdari, the Disgruntled Traveller (c. 1290), A Korean Officials Account of China (1488), The Poetry of Bashos Road (1689), Malabari: A Love-Hate Affair with the British (1890).

General Introduction by Tabish Khair
Note on the Process of Editing
1. The 5,000 year old Poetry of Travel: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Kalidasa's Meghadutam and Tang Poetry.
2. Three Chinese Scholars go 'West' to India (5th - 7th century)
3. The Travels of a Japanese Mond (c. 838)
4. A Merchant of Baghdad Reports on a Viking Funeral, A.D. 922
5. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (c. 990)
6. Alberuni's Defence of Hindu India (1030 AD)
7. The Horizons of al-Idrisi in the 11th Century
8. The Haj and Other Journeys of Ibn Jubayr (b. 1145)
9. Two Chinese Accounts of the Early Mongols (1221 and 1237)
10. The Pilgrimages of Lady Nijo (b. 1271)
11. The Memoirs of a Syrian Prince-Polymath (b. 1273)
12. Al-Abdari, the Disgruntled Traveller (c. 1290)
13. Zhou Daguan: Notes on Angkor Wat and Cambodia (1297)
14. Ibn Battutah, World Traveller (b. 1304)
15. Navigating with ibn Majid (floreat 1460)
16. A Korean Official's Account of China (1488)
17. The Travel Memoirs of Babur (b. 1482)
18. Piri Reis:l£"