Balkan Departures Travel Writing from Southeastern Europe [Paperback]

In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive  traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory definitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been travelled from. The regions writers have given accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and men-of-the-world, suggest that travellers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan Occidentalisms.

Alex Drace-Francisis Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool. He is the author ofThe Making of Modern Romanian Culture(2006) and of many articles on Romanian and Balkan history, historiography and literature.

&all the individual contributions are analytically sophisticated as well as readable&What stands out is how this collection as a whole enables us to rethink the significance of West-East connections from the perspective of travel writers from the Balkans who, while reflective of the West, often intended their travelogues to be also mirrors of what was either good or bad at home. Another important contribution is the rethinking and critique of binaries in the East-West dialogue.? ?? Slavonic & East European Review

This relatively slim but infinitely rich and engaging volume discussing travel writing in Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian literatures and cultures promises to change the stalƒA