Taras's Fans (6)

Taras Grescoe

Author profile

born

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

gender

male

website

http://www.tarasgrescoe.com/about_taras.html

genre

Nonfiction

About this author

edit data

Taras Grescoe was born in 1967. He writes essays, articles, and books. He is something of a non-fiction specialist.

His first book was Sacré Blues, a portrait of contemporary Quebec that won Canada's Edna Staebler Award for Non-Fiction, two Quebec Writers' Federation Awards, a National Magazine Award (for an excerpted chapter), and was short-listed for the Writers' Trust Award. It was published in 2000 by Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, and became a Canadian bestseller. Sacré Blues helped Taras fall in love with Quebec, and explained the origins of poutine to an eternally grateful country. The publisher let it go out of print, but used copies can be found starting at $89.23 on Amazon.

His second book, The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the To...more Taras Grescoe was born in 1967. He writes essays, articles, and books. He is something of a non-fiction specialist.

His first book was Sacré Blues, a portrait of contemporary Quebec that won Canada's Edna Staebler Award for Non-Fiction, two Quebec Writers' Federation Awards, a National Magazine Award (for an excerpted chapter), and was short-listed for the Writers' Trust Award. It was published in 2000 by Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, and became a Canadian bestseller. Sacré Blues helped Taras fall in love with Quebec, and explained the origins of poutine to an eternally grateful country. The publisher let it go out of print, but used copies can be found starting at $89.23 on Amazon.

His second book, The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists (2003), which was published by McClelland & Stewart, involved a gruelling nine-month journey by foot, rented Renault, India railway 2A sleeper, and túk-túk, from one End of the Earth (Finisterre in Galicia) to the other (Tianya Haijiao, the End of the Earth in Hainan, China). An exploration of the origins and consequences of mass tourism, The End of Elsewhere saw Taras walking from west to east along a thousand-year-old east-to-west pilgrimmage route, stuffing his belly on a cruise ship from Venice to Istanbul, and observing the antics of sex tourists in the flesh-pots of Thailand. It failed to win any prizes in Quebec, but was nominated for a national Writers' Trust Award, and was then published to great critical acclaim in England by Serpent's Tail. The New Yorker called it "A gloriously trivia-strewn history of tourism."

His third book, The Devil's Picnic: Around the World in Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit, was a real labor of love. Taras revived a post-adolescent interest in debauchery and (temporarily) turned it into a vocation, chewing coca leaves in Bolivia, scoring moonshine in Norway, and puffing on Cuban cigars in the smoke-easys in San Francisco. This one was published by Bloomsbury in New York, Macmillan in London, and HarperCollins in Toronto in 2005. The Picnic, critics seemed to agree, was a rollicking good read, with a serious subtext about the nanny state and the limits of individual liberty. It sold quite well, and was translated into German, French, Chinese, and Japanese, but didn't get nominated for anything. Apparently nobody wants to give writers prizes for having a really, really, good time (even with a serious subtext).

As for his fourth and latest book, Bottomfeeder, he really shouldn't have to tell you about it. You're soaking in it.

Taras is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Independent, and National Geographic Traveler. He has written features for Saveur, Gourmet, Salon, Wired, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, Maclean's, Men's Health, the Chicago Tribune Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Times of London, and Condé Nast Traveller. He has prowled nocturnally in the footsteps of Dalî and Buñuel in Toledo, Spain for National Geographic Traveler, eaten bugs for The Independent, and substituted for William Safire in the New York Times Magazine. His travel essays have been published in several anthologies.

He has twice been invited to appear at the Edinburgh Book Festival (where he learned to love brown sauce and vegetarian haggis), done the amazing Literary Journalism program at the Banff Centre (where he got the other writers ripped on authentic absinthe from the Val de Travers), and has led seminars on travel and food writing from the depths of Westmount to the heights of Haida Gwaii.

He lives on an island called Montreal, which can be found at the confluence of the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence Rivers.(less)

combine editions
Books by Taras Grescoe

Average rating: 3.94 · 642 ratings · 185 reviews · 14 distinct works

	Devil's Picnic 3.80 avg rating — 268 ratings — published 2005 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood 4.19 avg rating — 224 ratings — published 2008 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Bottomfeeder 3.94 avg rating — 32 ratings — published 2011	My rating:
	Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile 4.36 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 2011 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists 3.43 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 2003 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec 3.68 avg rating — 34 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Devil's Picnic 3.71 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2008	My rating:
	Dead Seas 4.50 avg rating — 4 ratings	My rating:
	Sacré Blues: Un Portrait Iconoclaste Du Québec 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2002	My rating:
	The Devil's Picnic: Travels Through the Underworld of Food and Drink 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2010	My rating:

More books by Taras Grescoe…

Upcoming Events

No scheduled events. Add an event.

Quotes by Taras Grescoe

“A few reasonable policies won't do much good if the surrounding society is insane.”
― Taras Grescoe, Devil's Picnic

tags: humor

6 people liked it

“Walking back across the St-Esprit bridge, to the ghetto I'd instinctively gravitated toward, I mentally erected a more appropriate statue on the square. It would depict an unknown Sephardic Jew, kneeling over a stone tripod covered with crushed cacao beans destined for a cup of chocolate for one of the gentiles of Bayonne.
It would be a symbolic piece, executed in smooth, chocolate-hued marble, and dedicated to all the other forgotten heroes--coffee-drinking Sufi dervishes, peyote-eating Native Americans, Mexican hemp-smokers--who, throughout history, have faced the wrath of all the sultans, drug czars, and Vatican clerics who have resorted to any spurious pretext to squelch one of the most venerable and misunderstood of human drives: the desire to escape, however briefly, everyday consciousness.”
― Taras Grescoe, Devil's Picnic

tags: humor , inspirational

1 person liked it

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Bookish: W11 - Completed Tasks	302	87	Apr 30, 2011 11:56pm
The Seasonal Read...: Spring Challenge 2011 Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS)	2898	731	May 31, 2011 09:01pm
Reading with Style: Reading w/Style Completed Tasks - Spring 2011	931	163	May 31, 2011 09:15pm
Book freaks: What are you currently reading?	1266	917	18 hours, 32 min ago

More…

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Taras to Goodreads.