In January 2020, we’ll be releasing Cape Town: A Place Between by writer and scholar Henry Trotter, the first volume in our new Intimate Geographies Series. Henry, the author of Sugar Girls & Seamen: A Journey into the World of Dockside Prostitution in South Africa (Ohio University Press), will also be serving as the series editor going forward.
We’ve asked Henry to introduce readers to the series, its goals, and our plans for future Intimate Geographies titles. Cape Town: A Place Between releases on January 3, 2020; pre-orders are available now.
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Here’s a question: If you could read only one book about a place – to understand it, to glimpse its soul – which book would it be? A thick, timeless classic? (You should, but you probably won’t.) A definitive history of the place? (Let’s not kid ourselves.)
We’re launching a new book series to help locals and travelers answer this tricky question, to help readers get under the skin of the fascinating places – cities, sites, locales – that often remain elusive and enigmatic because of their diversity and difference. We call it the Intimate Geographies series.
These short books, hovering around 100 pages each, aim to help you identify the unique pulse of a city, that throbbing historical, social, cultural and political beat that underlies every move, transaction, and expression amongst the people who live in it. The books are meant to deliver just the right amount of insight for you to understand the deeper meanings behind the experiences you have there.
A mix between travel narrative, literary non-fiction, and memoir, these books explore places of curiosity. Of complexity. Of contradiction. With so much already written about crowd-pleasers like Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo, these books focus on more off-beat destinations. Places we’ve all heard about, or maybe even visited or lived in, but which defy easy understanding. They confound lazy stereotypes and clichés. Often underappreciated, they nonetheless intrigue with their quirkiness, grit, charm, resilience, or dynamism.
The first volume, Cape Town: A Place Between, looks at life in one of Africa’s most beautiful and brutal cities. The next books that will come out over the next few years cover the compelling cities of Johannesburg, El Paso, Lagos and Zurich. Then we hope to continue with books on joints like Oakland, Manila, Belgrade, Dhaka, St Louis, Accra and Tijuana.
But unlike typical books in the travelogue genre, the Intimate Geographies series will be written by authors who have enjoyed lengthy lived experiences in these cities. They are writers who have transitioned from outsiders to insiders or, perhaps, from insiders to outsiders: both will provide the kinds of insights you expect from locals, while remaining sensitive to the questions and concerns of visitors.
So who are these books for? On the one hand, they are for residents who hanker for new perspectives on the places they inhabit. They offer them the chance to gain new knowledge about cities that, because they live there, they may also take for granted. (Let’s be honest: our understanding of “home” is always full of blindspots. These books shine a light on those shadowy corners.)
On the other hand, these books are for visitors who invariably have too little time to see much more than the city’s iconic points of interest. These volumes ensure that travelers see these places with sharper eyes, going beyond the information gleaned from the holiday brochure, the Tripadvisor Top 10, and the Wikipedia stub. They anticipate the questions that travelers ask about these places, providing satisfying answers that can illuminate and enliven their experiences while there.
Thus, the books of the Intimate Geographies series are not substitutes for traditional guidebooks, but their perfect companions, filling in the intimate details that other sources leave out.
