Far and Away

Andrew Solomon is every bit as magnificent a traveler as he is a writer - in fact, it's difficult at times to determine which is the greater talent. Thankfully, the reader gets to experience both gifts throughout the pages of this deeply impressive and profoundly moving collection. Here is man whose curiosities are vast (politics, art, food, psychology, anthropology), and whose intellect is beautifully honed, but whose spirit is humble and whose heart is enormous. You will not only know the world better after having seen it through Solomon's eyes, you will also care about it more.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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

From Cape Town to Bucharest, and Hangzhou to Tripoli, Andrew Solomon’s Far and Away is positively Whitmanian in its openness to difficulty and its embodiment of wonder. I felt exposed and expanded. This book is an ecstatic provocation to understand ourselves not as citizens of nations but as citizens of the entire world, a world whose territories are glorious and troubled and desperately connected.

Leslie Jamison

Greater than the sum of its parts. It sparkles with insights great and small on the countries and people that [Andrew Solomon] has had the privilege to meet over the last quarter century. Although his perceptions are keen, what he delivers best and with enchanting clarity are their truths, fears, regrets, and hopes. Readers will most certainly be inspired to book a flight, finishing this book en route to some faraway place.

Booklist

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

Vanity Fair

Agile, informative, even revelatory pieces that, together, show us both the great variety of humanity and the interior of a gifted writer’s heart.

Kirkus

Solomon’s writing captures the sweep of history and social upheaval through vivid, fine-grained reportage that’s raptly attuned to individual experience.

Publishers Weekly

His writing is never less than deeply perceptive, and wonderfully humane.

Caroline Sanderson, Bookseller

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

Will Coldwell, Guardian

He is an engaging guide – keen-eyed, self-reflective, shrewd, humane – and these articles have a pleasing passion.

Caroline Moorehead, Guardian

His voice and eye are always curious, never hurried; his sentences unspool elegantly, and are sharply alive to social cadences and cultural nuance... You can see him exploring and honing the listening habits that led to that book on almost every page here... Solomon lives with his subjects as long as he is able – searching out the dissident artists of China and the Inuit of Greenland, 80% of whom suffer from depression. In this way Solomon builds a picture of the world we have inhabited in the last 25 years, seen from its four corners.

Tim Adams, Observer

Far and Away is literary journalism at its cracking best.

Sara Wheeler, Mail on Sunday

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

Financial Times

One of the most original thinkers of our time.

Travel Extra Magazine

Solomon is an attentive and inquisitive anatomist of the ways that art is made within a society.

Alex Clark, Times Literary Supplement

Solomon has an outsider’s eagle eye. A dazzling volume.

Sara Wheeler, Spectator, Book of the Year

[A] wonderful collection of essays… Dip in and out, and you will be richly rewarded over and again.

Erica Wagner, New Statesman

This is a book to open the eyes and broaden the mind.

World of Cruising

As always, Solomon gets into the far corners of things, including people’s minds… He’s also very sharp on South Africa, China, Libya, Romania, and Brexit Britain, among others. He’s an expert on turmoil.

William Leith, Evening Standard