Aa Gill Is Away - Softcover

Gill, A. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743276671 ISBN 13: 9780743276672

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2005

Synopsis

A. A. Gill is one of the most feared writers in London, noted--according to the New York Times--for his "rapier wit." Some even consider the mere assignment of a subject to Gill a hostile act. But when the notice "AA GILL IS AWAY" runs in the Sunday Times of London, the city can rest peacefully in the knowledge that the writer is off traveling.
"My editor asked me what I wanted from journalism and I said the first thing that came into my head--I'd like to interview places. To treat a place as if it were a person, to go and listen to it, ask it questions, observe it the way you would interview a politician or a pop star," Gill writes.
Upon his return, readers are treated to an account of his vacations to places like famine-stricken Sudan, the pornography studios of California's San Fernando Valley, the dying Aral Sea or the seedy parts of Kaliningrad.
The result is one of the most fascinating, stylish and irreverent collections of travel writing.

About this title

Review

AA Gill: waspish restaurant critic and destroyer of schlock TV, a figure who never comes across as a sensitive soul in his columns for the Sunday Times and GQ. His new collection of travel reportage, AA Gill is Away, frequently warns against travelling with preconceptions, though, and so it is no surprise to peel off that veneer and find a different sort of writer in this book.

Gill's assignments have taken him around the world in pursuit of the great stand-first: a visit to the worst place in the world (the Aral Sea), how to write a porno film in a weekend and the joys of owning a Rolls Royce. In accordance with what is clearly a whistle-stop lifestyle, his book takes us all over the world: to Sudan, Bethlehem, Los Angeles, Patagonia--and Wilmslow in Cheshire. His writing is usually acute and provocative, and the various African articles are particularly sharp as he rails against the creeping colonialism perpetuated by aid agencies and international finance, and the crass priorities of drug companies whose profits are in Prozac and not cures for malaria or sleeping sickness.

Inevitably with a ragbag collection of this sort, the quality of the pieces vary. At times, you feel that Gill has dragged out his copy for his editors, and at others there is a surfeit of metaphors in which Gill tries too hard to be funny. But his trademark fury polishes his prose, which usually retains its sharpness and succeeds in conveying the thrill of immediacy without which no travel writing can sparkle. --Toby Green

Review

"A. A. Gill gives us a highly personalized and thrilling romp through the world's wild side."
--Christiane Amanpour, CNN

"This is passionate, funny, heartfelt, superbly crafted writing on places and things he clearly feels strongly about...I'm always happy when A. A. Gill is 'away.'"
--Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743276671
• ISBN 13: 9780743276672
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 305