Writing the Dark Side of Travel

The travel experience filled with personal trauma; the pilgrimage through a war-torn place; the journey with those suffering: these represent the darker sides of travel. What is their allure and how are they represented? This volume takes an ethnographic and interdisciplinary approach to explore the writings and texts of dark journeys and travels. In traveling over the dead, amongst the dying, and alongside the suffering, the authors give us a tour of humanity's violence and misery. And yet, from this dark side, there comes great beauty and poignancy in the characterization of plight; creativity in the comic, graphic, and graffiti sketches and comments on life; and the sense of profound and spiritual journeys being undertaken, recorded, and memorialized. Jonathan Skinner is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of Before the Volcano: Reverberations of Identity on Montserrat (Arawak Publications 2004), and co-editor of Managing Island Life (University of Abertay Press 2006) and Great Expectations: Imagination and Anticipation in Tourism (Berghahn 2011).