Paul Smethurst is an associate professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. His publications include The Postmodern Chronotope: Reading Space and Time in Contemporary Fiction (2000), Travel Writing, Form and Empire: The Poetics and Politics of Mobility (2008) and The Reinvention of Nature: Scientific, Picturesque and Romantic Travel Writing.

This timely and clearly focused collection of essays offers an illuminating introduction to accounts of travel to and from China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The travelogues challenge the reader to question many of the assumptions that characterise current studies in travel writing, revealing the richness of context-specific approaches that draw on a variety of journey accounts concerning common geographical zones. Highlighting issues of gender and ethnicity, of genre and history, Asian Crossings is essential reading for all serious scholars of travel literature. -- Charles Forsdick, James Barrow Chair of French, University of Liverpool