"At last a travel book on Asia that is as revisionist as it is invigorating. Steve Clark and Paul Smethurst have produced a collection that will entice and intrigue both the scholar and the general reader. Asian Crossings challenges many of the stock scho

"Turning away from a generalised post-colonial theory approach, the essays in Asian Crossings offer focused and unusually fruitful analyses of the travel writings they discuss. The result is a superb collection, indispensable both for its historical and g

"This timely and clearly focused collection of essays offers an illuminating introduction to accounts of travel to and from China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The travelogues challenge the reader to question many of the assumptions that characterise current

Steve Clark is currently visiting professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo. Among his previous publications are Travel Writing and Empire Postcolonial Theory in Transit (1999) and The Reception of Blake in the Orient (with Masashi Suzuki, 2006). Current projects include Liberating Medicine 1720-1830 (with Tristanne Connolly), and a collection of essays on the late thought of Paul Ricoeur. Paul Smethurst is an associate professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. His publications include The Postmodern Chronotope Reading Space and Time in Contemporary Fiction (2000), Travel Writing, Form and Empire The Poetics and Politics of Mobility (2008) and The Reinvention of Nature Scientific, Picturesque and Romantic Travel Writing 1760-1840 (forthcoming).