Travel writing is undergoing a revival: not since the 1920s and '30s has it been so popular or so important. What accounts for its sudden appeal? A need for escape? Nostalgia for an experience that means not tourism but adventure? Or does travel writing - being part reportage, part fiction, and part meditation - express concerns that we rarely see addressed in other forms of writing? This issue, the tenth edition of Granta, is devoted to the work of some of today's most important travel writers, including the already established and those just beginning to build their reputations.