Better Than Fiction: True Travel Tales From Great Fiction Writers by Alexander McCall Smith, Kurt Andersen
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher* A collection of original travel stories told by some of the world's best novelists, including Isabel Allende, Peter Matthiessen, Alexander McCall Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Tea Obreht and DBC Pierre. Exhilaratingly varied in place, plot, and voice, these tales all share one common characteristic: They manifest a passion for the precious gifts that travel confers, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places to the truths - sometimes uncomfortable but always enlarging - it reveals about ourselves. ...a brilliant collection of travel stories...threaded with great warmth, as readers are invited to travel in the company of these famous authors and experience their passions and revelations. BOOKSELLER + PUBLISHER Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013 Editorial Reviews From Booklist The intrepid adventurers at Lonely Planet continue to churn out imaginatively clever travel literature. This one combines travel with literary memoir as 32 reasonably well-known fiction writers recall some of their most remarkable experiences on the open road. While Frances Mayes, Joyce Carol Oates, Alexander McCall Smith, and Isabel Allende will be familiar to most, the travels of the lesser-known scribes are just as fascinating and fun. Seasoned editor George has also included a brief introduction to each piece, listing the books and outlining the literary credentials of its author. Armchair travelers will relish taking gorgeous, descriptive trips to Mexico, the Solomon Islands, Rome, Luxembourg, Java, and a host of other exotic and not-so exotic destinations. --Margaret Flanagan Review A fine anthology, with numerous fiction writers from Australia and New Zealand joining their colleagues from the UK and the US. (Perceptive Travel) Better Than Fiction is a fun collection of travel tales, that I enjoyed reading a few at a time, each joyously took me away from the daily world into a far away place with a few laughs along the way. (Alaskan Apple Users Group Blog 2013-02-07) The best of the essays are very personal experiences with meticulous description of place. (A Traveler's Library 2013-01-18) For anyone who considers themselves a voracious consumer of travel writing, Better Than Fiction will make for a refreshing and illuminating read... Great travel storytelling, like the work showcased in Better Than Fiction, reminds us that ultimately discovering the truth about the places we visit involves more than just restating the facts. (Gadling 2013-01-07) Isabel Allende, Joyce Carol Oates, and more provide warm and lovely stories from an account of an adventure off the beaten path in Malawai to visiting San Quentin Prison and chasing missionaries in far-away regions of Asia. The result is a powerful survey highly recommended for any literary travel collection. (Midwest Book Review)
Publication Details
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Binding: Paperback
Published by: Lonely Planet: , 2012
Edition:
ISBN: 9781742205946 | 1742205941
320 pages.
Book Condition: Very Good
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