Edward Stanford travel writing awards unpack 2016 shortlists

Literary heavyweights Yann Martel and Julian Barnes line up alongside Jessie Burton and Madeleine Thien on one of the shortlists for this year’s Edward Stanford travel writing awards. Barnes’s The Noise of Time and Martel’s The High Mountains of Portugal are among six shortlisted novels, including Burton’s The Muse and Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which the judges have selected for their sense of place.

The fiction shortlist is completed by Eowyn Ivey’s To the Bright Edge of the World and Robert Seethaler’s The Tobacconist.

Locations in the shortlisted novels range from Alaska and Austria to China, Spain and the former Soviet Union. Announcing the shortlist, Lyn Hughes, chair of judges and co-founder of Wanderlust magazine, said: “Our shortlisted writers have succeeded, brilliantly, [in] creating vividly portrayed backdrops around the world and across the centuries.”

The winner of the Specsavers prize for fiction with a sense of place will be revealed on 17 January alongside winners in five other travel-writing categories: adventure, children’s, illustrated, food and innovation. A separate shortlist for the £5,000 Stanford Dolman travel book of the year will also be announced that day, with the winner revealed on 2 February.

Cycling dominates the field in adventure travel writing, reflecting the phenomenal growth in the pastime over the past 10 years. Mark Beaumont’s Africa Solo tells of his record-breaking ride across Africa, while Zimbabwean Sean Conway completed an epic round the world cycle race, recounted in Cycling the Earth. Sarah Outen’s bike was just one mode of travel in Dare to Do, her account of a single-handed trip round the globe by bicycle, canoe and boat.

Two atlases, a celebration of language and culture, and a collection of folklore and fairytales from around the world feature on the children’s shortlist. Clive Gifford and Tracy Worrall’s Atlas of Oddities features remarkable facts about people, places and objects around the world, while Marc Martin’s A River follows a young girl as she imagines herself floating down the river, recreating the experience in a mixture of textures and images.

Two books about Persian cooking feature on the shortlist for food and travel writing, which features only one TV star – Rick Stein with Rick Stein’s Long Weekends. Persepolis by Sally Butcher features recipes from the author’s vegetarian café in Peckham, south London. Yasmin Khan’s The Saffron Tales is a more traditional take on food and travel writing, mixing together recipes with her personal and cultural history.

Tony Maher, managing director of Edward Stanford Limited, said travel writing had grown in importance since the world became more dangerous. He added: “These disparate shortlists have one unifying feature – they are all marvellous examples of what travel writing and publishing does best, which is to show the reader a world far from our own doorsteps, made reachable by these glorious, powerful and unforgettable books.”

• For a complete list of the shortlisted books, go to edwardstanfordawards.com