Deskbound Traveller: New and forthcoming books on travel and place

After a free-climbing accident that left him in a coma and kept him in hospital for four months, the prize-winning French writer Sylvain Tesson made a promise to himself...

A walking journey through France’s vast interior becomes a meditation on both personal recovery and the role of history in the present—more than 425,000 copies sold in France

After a free-climbing accident that left him in a coma and kept him in hospital for four months, the prize-winning French writer Sylvain Tesson made a promise to himself: if he was ever able to walk again, he would cross the whole of France on foot. In On the Wandering Paths, which his publisher says is “part literary adventure, part philosophical reflection on our contemporary consumer culture”, he traces the routes peasants once followed through the countryside, taking us deep into the heart of rural France. (The book has been a bestseller in France; a film based on it, Les Chemins de Pierre, starring Jean Dujardin, is due for release later this year.)

See Deskbound Traveller's other summer highlights here.