An NYRB Classic Original Jean-Paul Clébert was a boy from a respectable middle-class family who ran away from school, joined the French Resistance, and never looked back. Making his way to Paris at the end of World War II, Clébert took to living on the streets, and in Paris Vagabond, a so-called “aleatory novel” assembled out of sketches he jotted down at the time, he tells what it was like. His “gallery of faces and cityscapes on the road to extinction” is an astonishing depiction of a world apart—a Paris, long since vanished, of the poor, the criminal, and the outcast—and a no less astonishing feat of literary improvisation: Its long looping breathless sentences, streetwise, profane, lyrical, incantatory, are an adventure in their own right. Praised on publication by the great novelist and poet Blaise Cendrars and embraced by the young Situationists as a kind of manual for living off the grid, Paris Vagabond—here published with the starkly striking photographs of Clébert’s friend Patrice Molinard—is a raw and celebratory evocation of the life of a city and the underside of life.

An NYRB Classics Original Jean-Paul Clébert was a boy from a respectable middle-class family who ran away from school, joined the French Resistance, and never looked back. Making his way to Paris at the end of World War II, Clébert took to living on the streets, and in Paris Vagabond, a so-called “aleatory novel” assembled out of sketches he jotted down at the time, he tells what it was like. His “gallery of faces and cityscapes on the road to extinction” is an astonishing depiction of a world apart—a Paris, long since vanished, of the poor, the criminal, and the outcast—and a no less astonishing feat of literary improvisation: Its long looping breathless sentences, streetwise, profane, lyrical, incantatory, are an adventure in their own right. Praised on publication by the great novelist and poet Blaise Cendrars and embraced by the young Situationists as a kind of manual for living off the grid, Paris Vagabond—here published with the starkly striking photographs of Clébert’s friend Patrice Molinard—is a raw and celebratory evocation of the life of a city and the underside of life.

First published in 1799, George Walker's The Vagabond was an immediate popular success. Offering a vitriolic critique of post-Bastille Jacobinism and sansculotte-style mob rule, its true-to-life satirical portraits of many of the radical men and women who fought in the forefront of the "British Revolution" are nonetheless full of playful banter and farce. With swipes at Hume, Rousseau, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Paine; the French Revolution; and the ideas of the noble savage, natural virtue, liberty, equality, and romantic primitivism, The Vagabond offers a unique cross-section of 1790s radicalism. This Broadview edition contains a critical introduction and a wide selection of primary source materials that situate the novel in the context of the revolutionary debate of the 1790s. Appendices include contemporary reviews of the novel and excerpts from the writings of a variety of radicals and reactionaries engaged in the debate, such as Hume, Rousseau, Paine, Thelwall, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Burke, Playfair, Malthus, and Cobbett, among many others.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE “If you read one debut novel in 2022, this should be it.” —Los Angeles Times In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters—some haunted, some defiant—navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives. As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde's characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion. Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph.

Before a post-divorce road trip Chris Ames had been ensconced in French domesticity, with a wife, two children, and a regular job. Returning to Paris after that trip, he became an American vagabond and seeker who, lacking sufficient means and motivation to pay the rent and invest again in permanence, opted for homelessness. He soon found an unexpected place to pitch his tent--an abandoned golf course. Ames recounts a full year spent living there, with little baggage, through snow and heat, while commuting to his job as an English teacher in the city. Developing his urban-survivor skills, he rekindles relationships, starts others, offers glimpses of Parisian society--homeless and not--and ruminates on direction and the lack thereof. Ames circles serious questions, rarely losing a sense of irony, bewilderment, or amusement, especially at his circumstances, with their inherent discomforts, risks, and not-so-reassuring self-revelation. As readers see him stumble into renewed social bonds, his skewed searching and unconventional existence will engage and sometimes befuddle them. "I'm not saying become homeless, but do understand it opens many doors, and helps us appreciate the doors we can close."--from the introduction Winner of the Nonfiction Award in the Utah Division of Arts and Museums Original Writing Competition

“Thought-provoking, encouraging, and inspiring” (Gretchen Rubin) reflections on the power of travel to transform our daily lives—from the iconoclastic travel writer, scholar, and author of Vagabonding For readers who dream of travel, yearn to get back out on the road, or want to enrich a journey they’re currently on, The Vagabond’s Way explores and celebrates the life-altering essence of travel all year long. Each day of the year features a meditation on an aspect of the journey, anchored by words of wisdom from a variety of thinkers—from Stoic philosopher Seneca and poet Maya Angelou to Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Grover from Sesame Street. Iconoclastic travel writer and scholar Rolf Potts embraces the ragged-edged, harder-to-quantify aspects of travel that inevitably change travelers’ lives for the better in unexpected ways. The book’s various sections mirror the phases of a trip, including • dreaming and planning the journey: “All life-affecting journeys—and the unexpected wonders they promise—become real the moment you decide they will happen.” • embracing the rhythms of the journey: “The most poignant experiences on the road occur in those quiet moments when we recognize beauty in the ordinary.” • finding richer travel experiences: “Developing an instinct to venture beyond the obvious on the road allows you to see places as mysteries to be investigated.” • expanding your comfort zone: “No moment of instant gratification can compare to savoring an experience that has been earned by enduring the adversity that comes with it.” The Vagabond’s Way encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren’t able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.