Sultry Climates Travel And Sex

The sexual motives of travel are rarely spelled out in tourist guides and brochures. But in the shadows lurks an alternative history of travel, made up of precisely the details that usually go unmentioned. The nineteenth century established three main categories for the tourist: Connoisseur, Pilgrim, and Rebel. Each of these identities had a sexual side, as Ian Littlewood demonstrates with dazzling elegance and wit. From Byron in Greece to Isherwood in Germany to Orton in Morocco and right up to the present day, what emerges from the experiences recounted here is a continuing thread of travel, previously neglected or ignored, that comes into public view only with the twentieth century's cult of the sun. Book jacket.

Ian Littlewood is the author of literary companions to both Paris and Venice. He has taught at universities in the United States, France, and Japan, and now teaches at the University of Sussex.