Granta 124: Travel

I was inspired to read Granta 124: Travel (2013) becuse of the general theme of travel and the fact that it contained pieces by three of my favorite contemporary writers: Rattawut Lapcharoen, Dave Eggers, and Haruki Murakami. That being said I was disappointed by all of them save Murakami, who had an interesting nonfiction piece about walking in his former hometown of Kobe years after the 1995 earthquake ravaged the area.  Lapcharoen (author of a impressive short story collection, Sightseeing, in his debut) wrote a strange story, "The Captain," about a Thai American who returns to SE Asia for his honeymoon and is separated from his wife and held captive by locals who drain his bank accounts. I couldn't discern if he was trying to make a statement about modern Thailand or whether he was making some sort of personal metaphor out of the situation. Egger's story was something like a real life anecdote written as fiction and not very memorable. That being said there several other more memorable pieces such as Hector Abad's memoir about a visit to the Colombian amazon jungle in "A Rationalist in the Jungle." Another interesting piece was "Barrenland" by A Yi, which at first i mistook for a short story, but turned out to be memoir by a rural Chinese policeman. "Water Has No Enemy" by Nigerian writer Teju Cole was another enticing personal memoir about calamities and other extraordinary events that took place on a return visit to Lagos. I also found the photo essay "Tour Gide," with commentary by Phil Klay with WWII photos from Colonel A. Black, fascinating. There were more nonfiction pieces in this collection than usual and there were several pieces that didn't appeal to me on some level.