Wordstruck - how to write about other cultures

In a recent video interview with the Australian Writers’ Centre I was asked how I write about other cultures. The pitfalls, the pleasures. And how writing about my Indian characters in The Pagoda Tree differed from writing about Ani, the Tibetan nun, in Last Seen in Lhasa.

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It’s an interesting issue. In travel memoir writers often face the dilemma of how to write about ‘the other’ without sounding awestruck / judgemental / baffled or rude.

In the eighties PJ O’Rourke wrote Holidays in Hell. R...