The Best American Travel Writing 2013
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love, 2006), guest editor of the latest volume in this always rich yearly anthology, boldly avers that she chose travel stories that “were told the most marvelously in 2012.” To her, each piece “contains awe in strong enough doses to render the reader enchanted, delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled.” Such strong billing is not misleading, as readers will learn when they step into the pages of such delights as John Jeremiah Sullivan’s beautifully eloquent “A Prison, a Paradise” (from the New York Times Magazine), about travel to Cuba (“I’ve never stood on a piece of ground as throbbingly, even pornographically, generative”); Colleen Kinder’s “Blot Out” (from Creative Nonfiction), a punchy, even scary, account of a Western woman trying to pass as Muslim on the streets of Cairo; David Sedaris’ hilarious account of dentistry in Paris, “Dentists without Borders” (from the New Yorker); and Marie Arana’s gripping and sobering report on gold mining in Peru, “Dreaming of El Dorado” (from Virginia Quarterly Review). All the pieces included here are treasures of excellent writing, regardless of genre. --Brad Hooper