The Greatest Travel Writer

Filed in archive Travel Books on September 9, 2007

Travel writing, as I am fast becoming aware, is a rough game. With the sheer number of print and pixels dedicated to Travel, it is virtually impossible to wade through everything. For me, very few writers truly stand out. The great (and, of recent, late) Norman Lewis was the godfather of modern travel writing, able to transport readers to a place. For Lewis, travel writing was not about "my adventures." Lewis wrote in such a way that he ceased to be a distinct character, and became merely a placeholder for "the traveler." There is an element of living vicariously one gets from reading travel writing. Lewis, somehow, knew how to enhance that.

He dealt with everything with a stereotypical British nonchalance, at one point, taking barely a sentence out of his observations on New Guinea to explain how he broke his arm.

Lewis' best known titles are: Naples '44, The Honoured Society, A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth and A View of the World.