Special announcement: We are delighted that esteemed writer and journalist Monisha Rajesh will also be joining the conversation for this event.

Ahead of the Edward Stanfords Travel Writing Awards 2022 announcements this March, we are thrilled to welcome Jeremy Bassetti with two incredible guests. Writer, photographer and host of the Travel Writing World podcast Jeremy will be in conversation with celebrated travel writer Colin Thubron with his latest book The Amur River and fellow travel writer and journalist Tharik Hussain with his debut book Minarets in the Mountains: A Journey into Muslin Europe.

Explore these stunning two books, and join the conversation about the importance of travel writing, why we are driven to explore and what it means to be a travel writer in a time of a pandemic.

About the books:

The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Haunted by the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the most densely fortified frontier on earth.

The Amur River charts Thubron’s journey from the river’s secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles. Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, he makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores, starting out by Mongolian horse, then hitchhiking, sailing on poacher's sloops or travelling the Trans-Siberian Express. Having revived his Russian and Mandarin, he talks to everyone he meets, from Chinese traders to Russian fishermen, from monks to indigenous peoples. By the time he reaches the river's desolate end, where Russia's nineteenth-century imperial dream petered out, a whole, pivotal world has come alive.

Offering a unique perspective of two of the world’s superpowers via the story of the Amur, The Amur River is a shining masterpiece by the acknowledged laureate of travel writing, an urgent lesson in history and the culmination of an astonishing career.

Minarets in the Mountains, a magical eye opening account of a journey into a Europe that rarely makes the news and is in danger of being erased altogether.

Another Europe, a Europe few people believe exists and many wish didn’t. Muslim Europe.

Londoner Tharik Hussain sets off with his wife and his young daughters around the Western Balkans, home to the largest indigenous Muslim population in Europe, and explores the regions of Eastern Europe where Islam has shaped places and people for more than half a millennium. Encountering blonde – haired, blue- eyed Muslims, visiting mystical Islamic lodges clinging to the sides of mountains, and praying in mosques older that the Sistine Chapel, he paints a picture of a hidden Muslim Europe, a vibrant place with breath taking history, spellbinding culture and unique identity.

Minarets in The Mountains, the first English travel narrative by a Muslim writer on this subject, also explores the historical roots of European Islamophobia. Tharik and his family learn lessons about themselves and their own identity as Britons, Europeans and Muslims. Following in the footsteps of renowned Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi, they remind us that Europe is as Muslim as it is Christian, Jewish or pagan. Like William Dalrymple's In Xanadu, this is a vivid reimagining of a region's cultural heritage, unveiling forgotten Muslim communities, empires and their rulers; and like Kapka Kassabova's Border, it is a quest that forces us to consider what makes up our own identities, and more importantly, who decides?

Colin Thubron: is an acclaimed travel writer and novelist.

Winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award's Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing

His first books were about the Middle East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey he described in Among the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia (Prix Bouvier), Shadow of the Silk Road and To a Mountain in Tibet.

Among other honours, Thubron has received the Ness award of the Royal Geographical Society and the Livingstone Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. In 2007 he was made CBE. He was elected President of the Royal Society of Literature from 2010 to 2017, and named an RSL Companion of Literature in 2020.

Tharik Hussain: is affiliated as a fellow with the Centre for Religion and Heritage and is viewed widely as a specialist on Muslim heritage and culture, especially across the western hemisphere.

Tharik’s previous work has often served to decolonise authorised and popular religious and cultural histories and narratives. He has produced award winning radio on America’s earliest mosques and Muslims communities and written a chapter about encountering the indigenous Muslims and Romania in the book The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human: Travels from Many Muslim Worlds. He is author of several travel guides for Lonely Planet, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Thailand, where again he is viewed as an expert on Muslim culture and Muslim travel.

Monisha Rajesh: is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Time magazine, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Conde Nast Traveller. Her first book, Around India in 80 Trains (2012), was named one of the Independent's best books on India. Her second book, Around the World in 80 Trains, won the National Geographic Traveller Book of the Year in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Award.

Jeremy Bassetti -Jeremy is a writer and photographer. He has interviewed some of the worlds most famous travel writers in his award- winning podcast Travel Writing World.

Currently based in Orlando, he holds a PHD and teaches at a small college in central Florida.

 The event will start promptly at 6.30pm.

Tickets

Includes a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink and £5.00 off the published price of either The Amur River or Minarets in the Mountains for ticket holders on the evening.

We are pleased to welcome back events to Stanfords. We will closely monitor any changes in government policy that may impact the events and keep you up to date.

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