Far and Away by Andrew Solomon Published Today

Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World

by Andrew Solomon

Published 19 October 2017
£12.99
Paperback
ISBN 9781784700720

Wellcome Prize winner and National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon brings his sharp eye and fierce compassion to stories from all over the world.

In 1991 Andrew Solomon faced down tanks in Moscow with a band of Russian artists protesting the August coup. We find him on the quest for a rare bird in Zambia in 1998, and in Greenland in 2001 researching widespread depression among the Inuit. In 2002 he was in Afghanistan for the fall of the Taliban. He was brought in for questioning in Qaddafi’s Libya in 2006. In 2014 he travelled to Myanmar to meet ex-political prisoners as the country fitfully pushed towards freedom. Far and Away tells these and many other stories. With his signature compassion, Solomon demonstrates both how history is altered by individuals, and how personal identities shift when governments change.

A journalist and essayist of remarkable perception and prescience, Solomon chronicles a life’s travels to the nexus of hope, courage, and the uncertainty of lived experience and tracks seismic shifts – cultural, political and spiritual. He takes us on a magnificent journey into the heart of extraordinarily diverse experiences via intimate, deeply moving stories that reveal and revel in our common humanity.

“Solomon unites human history around the world through his intimate, personal accounts.”

Will Coldwell, Guardian

“This is a beautiful book, inspired by love of ‘away' and uncertainty about ‘home,' a celebration of freedom which valuably warns that freedom must sometimes be learned. Much more than 'travel writing,' it's a portrait of our world, made by someone who has been there.”

Salman Rushdie

“Andrew Solomon’s magisterial Far and Away collects a quarter-century of soul-shaking” essays.

 Vanity Fair

“The pieces, covering 25 years, are brilliant…models of unsparing lucidity and trenchant observation.”

 Financial Times

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Solomon holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge; is a professor of psychology at Columbia University and President of PEN American Center; and is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. A lecturer and activist, he is the author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, which won the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and many other awards; and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been published in twenty-four languages. His TED talks have been viewed over 12 million times. A dual UK/US national, he lives in London and New York.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT

Ashton Bainbridge or Stephanie Speight at FMcM ashtonb@fmcm.co.uk & stephanies@fmcm.co.uk | 0207 4057422