Nine Subversive Travel Novels

Travel Books: Thomas Kohnstamm celebrates fiction that uncovers deeper truths about travel and the world

01.13.10 | 11:11 AM ET

Travel writing is often assumed to be only non-fiction travelogue, but I see travel literature as anything in which place plays a central role—and that can include fiction, or anything in between fiction and non-fiction.

The roman à clef, subjective (gonzo) memoir and fictional travel novel allow the writer to explore socially and politically sensitive, if not subversive, themes from more angles than the straightforward travelogue.

Take, for example, Bruce Chatwin’s controversial classic, “In Patagonia.” The book lies somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, and that allowed Chatwin to create a grittier, more textured—and considerably more intimate—portrait of the land and its people. Novelist and memoirist Anthony Doerr said, “I flat-out loved ‘In Patagonia’ when I first read it and was never bothered to learn that some of it is made-up. Everything is artificial and subjective to a certain degree anyway, isn’t it?” 

ALSO SEE: Nine Subversive Non-Fiction Travel Books

Here are nine travel books that use fiction to uncover deeper and, often, uncomfortable truths.

‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad

Based on Joseph Conrad’s 1889 journey up the Congo River, Heart of Darkness may not be the most racially sensitive book by contemporary standards. However, the book was innovative at the time of its publication because it called into question the supposedly civilizing forces of European interests in Africa. In effect, it damned the Europeans’ self-proclaimed moral high ground. From the book’s powerful introduction on the deck of a ship on the Thames to travails in the Congo, the story is vivid and transporting, but still manages to be a socio-political critique of home. Not bad, considering that English was Conrad’s third language.

‘Journey to the End of the Night’ by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

This novel’s anti-hero (and Céline’s alter-ego) Ferdinand Bardamu has a concocted last name that translates roughly as “backpack-move.” Mainly autobiographical, it follows Céline’s travels through Europe, colonial Africa, post-World War I America, and his hometown of Paris, with a caustic, nihilistic depiction of people and culture. The author later went off the deep end as a vocal anti-Semite, but this sharply eloquent book tears back the façade of industrial America, romantic Paris, European colonialism and, perhaps, the notion that human beings are ever truly redeemable.

‘Away’ by Amy Bloom

Amy Bloom’s recent novel, Away, tracks its immigrant heroine, Lillian Leyb, across a 1920s America replete with prostitutes, prisoners, exploitation and racism. Lillian’s travels are motivated not by any urge to see the world, but by love, and a desire to find the daughter she lost in a Russian pogrom. Lillian stows away in the bathrooms of passenger trains, walks across most of Alaska, trades sex for security and immerses herself in Seattle’s African-American underclass. “Away” does not shy away from harsh historical realities and complex interpersonal and internal tensions.

‘Factotum’ by Charles Bukowski

Set near the end of World War II, Factotum is a picaresque of deadbeat alcoholic and Bukowski alter-ego Henry Chinaski. Good ol’ Hank makes his way from booze-soaked nights in skid row Los Angeles around the country and back while slaving away at menial, mind-numbing jobs. All the while, Chinaski labors to become a published writer and befriends and fornicates with equally lost souls and tragic characters. “Factotum” depicts an underbelly of the listless World War II home-front America that flies in the face of the triumphal image painted in your average U.S. history class.

‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ by Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson’s most celebrated work and genre-defining masterpiece is at once a psychedelic road trip buddy comedy and a hedonistic 1970s reevaluation of the American Dream. It’s based on road trips made between Los Angeles and Las Vegas by Thompson and Chicano activist-lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta. It’s a domestic travelogue that uses San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and a wide array of uniquely American characters in a twisted critique of the achievements (or lack of achievements) of 1960s counterculture.

‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac

One of America’s most popular novels and go-to reading for any young traveler, On the Road developed out of Kerouac’s North American travels in the late 1940s. Once seen as rebellious, Kerouac’s adventures—like, say, going to Mexico to smoke weed with a real, live Mexican—are something that many Americans now experience prior to finishing high school. Kerouac’s 1940s fringe behaviors are no longer so taboo. However, when “On the Road” was published at the apex of American conformity in 1951, it was scandalous and revolutionary. One thing hasn’t changed, however: the book’s ability to motivate readers to chuck their quotidian routine and hit the road.

‘Kaputt’ by Curzio Malaparte

Italian fascist-cum-exile-cum-writer-and-eventual-Communist Malaparte explores the horrific endgame on the Eastern front of World War II in the Ukraine. Malaparte served the Italian government as a diplomat and worked as a correspondent during the war and was able to evaluate the devastation through the eyes of the people who knew they were going to lose. He drifts through lands immersed in conflict and creates a larger picture of madness and cruelty. This is a cynical and terrifying travelogue through hell, which offers as much discomfort as it offers insight. Perhaps this is to be expected from someone whose nom-de-plume means “of the bad place.”

‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ by George Orwell

One of the first great down-on-your-luck travel books, Down and Out in Paris and London is a depiction of Eton-educated young Orwell’s supposed slumming as a dishwasher in Paris and panhandling as a hobo in London. Rather than going on to hone his writing at Oxford or Cambridge, Orwell reported on the underworld of two great, yet class-conscious, cities through his fictionalized interactions with broken laborers and desperate immigrants. Orwell is none too kind to the harsh practices of the restaurant industry and shows signs of sympathy for the exploitation of workers, which he exhibited again in “1984.” 

‘Lost Horizon’ by James Hilton

Rumored to be influenced by National Geographic articles about the Tibetan travels of an Austrian-American explorer, James Hilton’s novel is the source of the fictional Tibetan lamasery (and now cliché Western utopian concept) of Shangri-La. Published in 1933, the novel uses visions of utopia to hint at the gathering storm of what was to become World War II. Trace Crutchfield, who pushed boundaries himself as a correspondent for “The Vice Guide to Travel” and “Current TV,” celebrates Lost Horizon “not only for establishing the concept of Shangri-La in a time of serious political upheaval, but for also being the first paperback in print.”