'His cornucopia of tellers and tales is a delight, a riveting celebration of a genre that revels in its own hybridity and the imaginative riches produced by the crossing of cultural and literary borders' Financial Times'Like a child after the Pied Piper I pursued Jubber into a world both human and full of magic. A carnival of a book, rigorously researched and jostling with life' Amy Jeffs, author of St...

The Sahara: a dream-like, far away landscape of Lawrence of Arabia and Wilfred Thesiger, The English Patient and Star Wars, and home to nomadic communities whose ways of life stretch back millennia. Today it's a teeth-janglingly dangerous destination, where the threat of jihadists lurks just over the horizon. Following in the footsteps of 16th century traveller Leo Africanus, Nicholas Jubber went on a turbulent adventure to the forgotten places of North Africa an...

Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from?In Monsterland, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber goes on a journey to discover more about the monsters we’ve invented, lurking in the dark and the wild places of the earth — giants, dragons, ogres, zombies, ghosts, demons — all with one thing in common: their ability to terrify.His far-ranging adventure takes hi...

An engrossing blend of travel writing and history, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard traces one man's adventure-filled journey through today's Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and describes his remarkable attempt to make sense of the present by delving into the past.Setting out to gain insight into the lives of Iranians and Afghans today, Nicholas Jubber is surprised to uncover the legacy of a vibrant pre-Islamic Persian culture that has endured even in times of th...

These are the stories that made Europe.Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber takes us on a fascinating adventure through our continent's most enduring epic poems to learn how they were shaped by their times, and how they have since shaped us.The great European epics were all inspired by moments of seismic change: The Odyssey tells of the aftermath of the Trojan War, the primal conflict from which much of Eur...

The surprising origins and people behind the world's most influential magical tales: the people who told and re-shaped them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them and were in turn formed by them.Fairy-Tales are not just fairy-tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers' Trail, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret h...

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2020Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe exploring Europe's epic poems, from the Odyssey to Beowulf, the Song of Roland to the Nibelungenlied, and their impact on European identity in these turbulent times. These are the stories that made Europe.Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer ...

Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from?In Monsterland, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber goes on a journey to discover more about the monsters we've invented, lurking in the dark and the wild places of the earth—giants, dragons, ogres, zombies, ghosts, demons—all with one thing in common: their ability to terrify.His far-ranging adventure takes him ac...

Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from?In Monsterland, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber goes on a journey to discover more about the monsters we’ve invented, lurking in the dark and the wild places of the earth ? giants, dragons, ogres, zombies, ghosts, demons ? all with one thing in common: their ability to terrify.His far-ranging adventure takes him across the world. He sit...