Last night we announced the shortlists for the 2025 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards Presented by Viking. Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating the best travel writing in the world.
Here are the shortlists:
Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year:
Black Ghosts: : A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China
by Noo Saro-Wiwa (Canongate Books)
£14.99
Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China”s ”Black Ghosts”, African economic migrants in the People”s Republic. Living in clustered communities, they are key to the trade between the continents. This is a story of intersecting cultures told with candour and compassion, focusing on the shared humanity between the sojourner and their hosts.
On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar
by Clare Hammond (Allen Lane)
£25
While working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed railways not shown on any other publicly available maps. She was determined to uncover the railways’ origins, purpose, and most of all, the silence that surrounded them.
by Tom Chesshyre (Summersdale)
£20
Ever dreamt of dropping everything and adventuring cross-country to the edge of Asia? That”s just what rail enthusiast Tom Chesshyre did, hitting the tracks for a 4,570-mile adventure on 55 rides, shadowing the old Orient Express route.
by James Rebanks (Allen Lane)
£22
Many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. A centuries-old trade that had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. For Rebanks, this is the beginning of an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.
Wayfarer: Love, Loss and Life on Britain’s Ancient Paths
by Phoebe Smith (HarperNorth, Harper Collins)
£16.99
On an assignment to walk the most famous pilgrimage in the world – the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain – Phoebe Smith somehow lost her way. She quit her dream job and headed home to North Wales to discover the point to… everything. In her search for answers she found herself – quite by accident – walking some of Britain’s oldest pilgrim paths.
by Jeff Young (Little Toller Books)
£20
Jeff Young sets out from Liverpool in the 1970s pursuing a vision of becoming a ‘wild twin’. In Europe he falls into a fever dream of drugs, dive hotels, poverty, madness and thieving. An extraordinary memoir, a hallucinatory dream book of loss and loneliness, wild images and a love song to cities.
Viking Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place
by Aube Rey Lescure (Duckworth Books)
£9.99
Set in: China, Qingdao, Shanghai
A dark and glittering literary debut that traces a mixed family’s troubled trajectory through developing China. A mesmerising reversal of the east-west immigrant narrative set against China”s economic boom, River East, River West is a deeply moving exploration of race, identity and family, of capitalism”s false promise and private dreams.
by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton)
£16.99
Set in : A near future London & the past Arctic
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?
by Elif Shafak (Viking, Penguin)
£18.99
Set in: Iraq, London & Türkiye
This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water. A dazzling feat of storytelling from Elif Shafak. This is a rich, sweeping novel that spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops.
by Nikki May (Doubleday, Transworld, Penguin Random House)
£16.99
Set in: Lagos & England
A powerful de-colonial retelling of Mansfield Park, exploring identity, culture, race and love.
Witty, warm, hugely entertaining, This Motherless Land bridges three decades and two continents, delving into the thorny territories of race and culture and belonging. At its heart is a story about love and how it can make the difference between surviving and thriving.
by Eric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss (Gallic Books)
£9.99
Set in: 1980s Cairo & Montreal
Tarek’s whole life is laid out for him. A doctor like his father, he has taken over the family medical practice and married his childhood sweetheart. When he opens a clinic in a disadvantaged area, he meets Ali, a man who is free from the societal pressures that govern Tarek’s life. This chance encounter will change everything, throwing Tarek’s entire existence into question.
by David Nicholls (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton)
Set in: England, the Coast to Coast Path
When a persistent mutual friend and some very English weather conspire to bring Marnie and Michael together, they suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship. But can they survive the journey? This is a novel of first encounters, second chances and finding the way home.
Children’s Travel Book of the Year:
by Rashmi Sirdeshpande & Jason Lyon (Wide Eyed Editions)
£20
Amazing Asia brings readers bang up to date, exploring everything from the origin of Asian migration, to pockets of Asian culture all over the planet. Find out about Asia’s cultural reach across the globe with K-pop, martial arts, street food, sport, Bollywood, gaming and spirituality, as well as the rise in business and technology.
by Iron Tazz & Martin Stanev (Magic Cat Publishing)
£20
Discover camping, trekking and backpacking with hiking sensation Iron Tazz. This fully-illustrated book is the perfect introduction to enjoying the great outdoors. Explore 30 diverse terrains, from snow-capped mountains to coastal trails to ancient forests, and discover the majesty of nature.
by Jack Jackman (Nosy Crow)
£7.99
When childcare falls through and Dad has to take Maisie to Antarctica to research his next book, How To Survive In Antarctica, Maisie realises there is definitely something unusual about Dad. Filled with humour, heart and a touch of the supernatural this first book in a brilliant new series takes you on a non-stop adventure in Antarctica, perfect for the most intrepid of readers.
by Talya Baldwin (Birlinn Ltd)
£7.99
This beautifully illustrated picture book tells the story of St Kilda and its wildlife and the people that once lived there. The perfect book for enquiring minds, it is imaginative, engaging and cleverly conceived, and will delight young readers and keep grown-ups equally intrigued.
Scientists in the Wild: Antarctica
by Helen Scales, Kate Hendry & Rômolo D’Hipólito (Flying Eye Books)
£15.99
Tasked with studying the changing environment and wildlife, a team of scientists will set sail onboard the Noto to explore Antarctica. To get the job done, they will use drones to track colonies of penguins, board deep-diving submersibles to monitor huge melting glaciers, and drill to investigate ancient ice cores.
Solstice: Around the World on the Longest, Shortest Day
by Jen Breach & 14 global artists (What on Earth!)
£15.99
Explore the daily lives of children around the world through the lens of a single, special day in June, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and the shortest in the southern hemisphere. Specially commissioned artwork, by illustrators from each place, bring familiarity and warmth to every page.
The shortlist for the Bradt New Travel Writer of the Year will be announced in January.
Previous winners of Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards include Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron, Paul Theroux and Dervla Murphy.
Each category will be judged by a panel made up of travel writers, Stanfords and Viking team members and literary experts. The winners of the categories along with the Bradt New Travel Writer of the Year (for unpublished writers) will be announced at a celebratory event in March. Each award winner will be presented with a hand-made globe from the Lander & May workshop located on the Isle of Wight featuring a design produced exclusively for the awards.
