Colin Thubron is a versatile writer whose carefully honed novels have been well received by critics; his travel literature has also attracted critical acclaim, as well as such honors as the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. His books, both fiction and travel, display a keen sense of history and place; he excels at portraying the changes and contradictions caused by the passing of time. He maintains a careful distance in his travel writing, revealing little about himself while fully describing the places he visits and the people he meets. Thubron began his career as a travel writer, and he has evolved a pattern of writing a travel book, then a novel or two, and then returning to travel writing. In a 1992 interview with Barth Healey Thubron said that travel books are easier to write than novels because “they are about the outside world. They...