There’s Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckle-berry Finn, about a white boy who takes to the Mississippi River to avoid the ‘sivilizing’ efforts of his aunt. River journeys can be a great escape or a terrifying nightmare. Try classics like 2001, a Space Odyssey or Andy Weir’s The Martian and Project Hail Mary or Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, a brilliant and hilarious read even if you don’t like sci-fi. Science fiction is a genre that relies on physical travel into deep space and imaginative exploration of far-reaching ideas and possibilities. It’s a great read and has just been released as a film starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton. But he finds himself walking the length of England from his home in Devon to the hospice in Berwick. He writes her a letter and sets off to mail it. Harold is a 65-year old retiree who learns that an old friend is ill and in a hospice. Or there are some great translations around to dip into.įor a more modern take, try Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye. The language of 1400 looks very different from modern English but read it aloud and you soon get the hang of it: ‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote…/Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimage’. The stories range from morality tales to bawdy sex romps and the tellers include a knight, a merchant, a nun, a miller and a very ‘in your face’ wife from Bath. Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem The Canterbury Tales is a series of stories told by pilgrims as they travel from London to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury.
It also gave us the word to describe any long and arduous travel. One of the earliest literary journeys is Homer’s poem The Odyssey, about the 10-year voyage home of the Greek hero Odysseus after the Trojan War. And the landscapes of journeys may be recognisable places or fantastic realms. Journeys are everywhere in books and there are many different reasons for going: escape, reunion, adventure, exploration. A column to help you request a good book even if you can’t get to the library
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