SOURCE: Thubron, Colin, and Nicholas Wroe. “Don't Forget Your Toothbrush: A Life in Writing.” Guardian (23 September 2000): 11.

In the following interview, Thubron discusses his body of work and his career as a travel writer.

According to travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron, the publishing industry made an exciting discovery in the mid-1970s. “They realised that travel writing could also be literature,” he says, “which was of course very fortunate for my generation. Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, Jonathan Raban and myself were hyper-praised for a while. All that has now slightly faded, but I do think that travel writing is still in a healthy state.”

One of the key reasons the genre has remained so strong is that Thubron has continued to write travel books. He has published nine in all, as well as six novels. The latest book, In Siberia, gives a lyrical and learned account of this...