Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A fascinating account and unusual look as to why we travel and how we can travel nowadays. How travel has changed! : The feel of Sydney summers is beautifully evoked.
Questions of Travel
What you need to know before your trail
Questions of Travel charts two very different lives.
Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides.
Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events.
This is a tale of people, places and stories – all interwoven with dramatic effect
This is a tale of travel – what it means and why people do it – travel for pleasure, or for work; for migration, or for asylum.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
Travelling – why do people do it and what makes them move to another country if even for a short time? Travelling can be anything from a holiday, to moving abroad to claiming asylum and these are only some of the questions touched upon by Michelle de Kretser.
With decades as chapter headings, this book chronicles the lives of two characters – Laura and Ravi. Laura is from Australia and she travels to Europe in order to taste freedom and to explore. she is young and fancy free and loves life living on her last paycheck when the money runs out.
Ravi on the other hand is from Sri Lanka and does not have the same kind of travel opportunities as Laura. His travels are those in books and his atlas –
“His thumbnail traced journeys across continents. He went for a walk across the world.”
These two characters are representative of two questions of travel – the dreams and the possibilities and the reasons for being able to travel. Travelling opens up many new worlds and also provides an escape from others. An interesting contrast of what travelling means.
The backdrop during the time of the novel is from 1960s onwards giving us a sense of time and place and showcases very different countries and the people who travel from them.
For the language buffs, a memorable quote -as Laura travels to Paris – “Paris was surely her reward for irregular verbs committed to memory…’ Yes this sounds familiar.
Where Next?
