Chasing the Devil by Tim Butcher

One of my favorite genres is the literature of travel—that idiosyncratic blend of reporting, history, and personal rumination that has always been such a strong tradition in England. We have excellent travel magazines, and some of our best writers contribute to them; but, apart from Paul Theroux (who lived in England for so long that he hardly counts as American), we rely largely on imports to show us how the thing is done. D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia; Evelyn Waugh’s Mediterranean Journal; E.M. Forster’s Alexandria: A History and Guide: virtually every English writer of note, going back to Boswell and Dickens, has contributed a volume to the travel bookshelf. The impulse to leave home—and write about it—is in their blood.

These are the amateurs of the form, canonical English writers roaming the globe. But there has always been a robust line of professionals for whom travel literature is their chosen form: Wilfrid Thesiger, Freya Stark, Bruce Chatwin, Norman Douglas. Again, a long shelf.

Tim Butcher, whose Chasing the Devil we’ve just published, belongs to the latter—though in the end, like all great writers, he eludes classification.