Voyagers

In Competition No. 2786 you were invited to submit a feature for a travel supplement as it might have been written by a well-known novelist, living or dead.
 
Derek Morgan’s George Orwell is in Paris and insufficiently down-and-out: ‘Although I would have preferred to haul my suitcase on foot from Gare du Nord, a taxi whisked me to Place des Vosges and my nearby four-star hotel with its sickeningly servile staff.’ I also liked Johannes Kerkhoven’s Cannery Row-inspired take on the Argentinian city of Tilcara, and Adrian Fry’s evocation of a Spanish ghost town filtered through Ballard’s dystopian lens. It was a cracking entry. Congratulations all round. The winners take £25. The bonus fiver is Chris O’Carroll’s.

New Orleans calls itself the Big Easy, but the sultry languor of the bayou is far from being a nerveless or quiescent thing. There is strenuous passion in the hot, bright ease of this place, where the air is moist, heavy and fragrant under the almost tropical sun.