Someone asked me recently why I wanted to write ‘travel fiction.’ Before that, it had never even occurred to me that that’s what I do. I know much of my work has been inspired by my travels – I lived overseas for fifteen years in four different countries, and visited many more in that time, but I never realised there’s a genre called ‘travel fiction.’
My novel, Do Not Keep Silent, was very much inspired by a fantastic holiday I had in Hong Kong just before the protests broke out in 2019. Set mostly in Hong Kong, it tells the story of Brightonian university drop-out Pete Anderson, who just as he’s finally making something of his start-up business decides he needs a break. He travels to Hong Kong, where he was born when his parents lived there as expats around the time of the hand-over. There, he meets Mae Yang, a protest leader with all the drive and fire Pete seems to be lacking in his own life.
An earlier novel, The Mask Slips, is another piece of travel fiction, based on a six-week holiday I spent in Sri Lanka several years ago. It explores the damage wrought by years of civil war on the residents and tourists of a beach one fateful Christmas.
My fantasy novel The Tale of the Birds was heavily influenced by the fact I lived in Egypt when I wrote it, even though much of it is set in a fantasy equivalent of Northern Europe. Another fantasy novel, The Concubine’s Son, was inspired by a three-week holiday in Vietnam.
Not only my novels that have been shaped by my travels—many of my short stories have also been inspired by the places I’ve visited. Each captures a moment, a mood, or a memory tied to a specific location, almost like souvenirs.
- Life In Shadows – Thailand, set mainly in the Oriental Hotel
- Rebirth – set in an atomic bomb-ravaged Japan
- All Part of the Experience – a much gentler story set in Japan about a middle-aged English couple visiting a Kyoto monastery
- Oranges on the Road to Mandalay – Myanmar
- The View from Mandalay Hill – Myanmar again
- The Fishergirl – Egypt
- Selfie in Budapest – Hungary
Tripfiction.com seems to suggest that any fiction set in far-off locations is travel fiction. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be any particular genre rules, perhaps because travel fiction can fall into all sorts of different genres. Certainly, The Mask Slips would fall into the contemporary genre, while Do Not Keep Silent is a romantic thriller (or perhaps a thriller that features a romance).
Incidentally, writing this article has reminded me of another term I heard recently: Hotel Fiction, a genre which I guess Life In Shadows falls into, even though it’s primarily a love story that happens to be set in Bangkok.
In terms of reading travel fiction, I know that when I’m on holiday, reading books set in the country I’m visiting heightens my enjoyment of the place and the story. Recent examples include The Sword and the Schitar by David Ball (Malta) and ‘The Fine Art of Invisible Detection” by Robert Goddard (Iceland).
In terms of writing it, I think it is genuinely a way of extending a holiday. Which is probably why I will continue. After all, who wants a holiday to end?
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