Reading Tomas Espedal, Tramp (Or The Art of Living a Wild and Poetic Life), always a heartbeat away from stuffing a few items into my worn leather backpack and sneaking silently towards the coast. Feeling the urge to sleep in unfamiliar hotel bedrooms and wander well-trodden footpaths through strange woods.

Tomas Espedal is a fresh discovery, in another beguiling Seagull Books edition. Espedal writes with Denton Welch’s yearning, combined with his acute observation of both people and landscape. But there is also something reminiscent of Robert Walser, perhaps in a narrative stance that avoids emotion and records the episodes of his journeys around Europe and Turkey with little or no commentary. His text only rarely attempts interpretation, a characteristic familiar to any long-distance walker.

Also familiar to the long-distance walker are the meandering digressions. Tramp mirrors the journey that a mind takes when walking fifteen, twenty miles  day, one moment self-reflective, another nostalgic, another moment lost in a train of thought about Giacometti’s mother and the artists’ s nightly visits to Parisian brothels.

I need new stout leather boots. But perhaps it is safer to turn to another of Tomas Espedal’s books than order another pair of boots.

Homesickness. It’s an inevitable part of all journeys, we’re exhausted and wish for home; the homesickness grows, strengthens and permeates every part of the body; the feet want home, the hands, the heart, the thoughts want home. We’ve had enough, seen enough, heard enough, experienced more than we can bear, and the homesickness spreads through our bodies like a lazy indifference, a lethargy that can no longer be bothered to relate to further moves and changes, meetings and places. The journey back has already begun, we think of home and are going home in our thoughts, even though we’ve still got a long journey ahead, we haven’t reached the halfway mark, but it’s as if the road has made a subtle turn, it’s rounded a bend and after that bend the direction is different; it’s treading slowly and imperceptibly back.