- Published: 16 August 2022
- ISBN: 9781784743260
- Imprint: Chatto & Windus
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 416
- RRP: $32.99
Imagine a City
A Pilot Sees the World















- Published: 16 August 2022
- ISBN: 9781784743260
- Imprint: Chatto & Windus
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 416
- RRP: $32.99
A enriching memoir of how a sensitive, introverted boy's yearning for escape and acceptance found its fulfilment in the life of an airline pilot... A touching survey of human dreams and endeavours and a hymn to the quiet pleasures of returning, in the flesh or in memory, to the intimate geography of one's hometown
Patrick Gale
A enriching memoir of how a sensitive, introverted boy's yearning for escape and acceptance found its fulfilment in the life of an airline pilot... A touching survey of human dreams and endeavours and a hymn to the quiet pleasures of returning, in the flesh or in memory, to the intimate geography of one's hometown
Patrick Gale
Mark Vanhoenacker is a beautiful, lyrical writer who uses his experience as a pilot to bring us constantly in touch with the transcendent and the other-worldly
Alain de Botton
Mark Vanhoenacker is a beautiful, lyrical writer who uses his experience as a pilot to bring us constantly in touch with the transcendent and the other-worldly
Alain de Botton
Refreshingly personal and moving... This absorbing modern twist on the age-old story of flying the nest, yet yearning for home, will transport you around the globe and back again without leaving your seat
Mark Ovenden, author of AIRLINE MAPS and LONDON UNDERGROUND BY DESIGN
Refreshingly personal and moving... This absorbing modern twist on the age-old story of flying the nest, yet yearning for home, will transport you around the globe and back again without leaving your seat
Mark Ovenden, author of AIRLINE MAPS and LONDON UNDERGROUND BY DESIGN
An utterly remarkable and original travel book. Like Jan Morris and Pico Iyer, Vanhoenacker weaves memoir and travelogue, using his unusual perch as a pilot to take us on an incredible journey to dozens of cities around the world. Like Italo Calvino, he somehow weaves it all into one, a painfully beautiful cubist city of memory and dreams that rises out of his warm and lyrical prose
Andrew Blum, author of TUBES and THE WEATHER MACHINE
An utterly remarkable and original travel book. Like Jan Morris and Pico Iyer, Vanhoenacker weaves memoir and travelogue, using his unusual perch as a pilot to take us on an incredible journey to dozens of cities around the world. Like Italo Calvino, he somehow weaves it all into one, a painfully beautiful cubist city of memory and dreams that rises out of his warm and lyrical prose
Andrew Blum, author of TUBES and THE WEATHER MACHINE
A tour de force of descriptive power and honesty; I can think of no other book like this one
Tom Zoellner, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
A tour de force of descriptive power and honesty; I can think of no other book like this one
Tom Zoellner, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Dreamy and erudite... [Vanhoenacker is] a most likeable, warm-hearted narrator with an original world view
Melanie Reid, The Times
Dreamy and erudite... [Vanhoenacker is] a most likeable, warm-hearted narrator with an original world view
Melanie Reid, The Times
I absolutely love the way Mark Vanhoenacker writes about the world; he gives you a whole new way of seeing
Jenny Colgan, author of SUNRISE BY THE SEA
I absolutely love the way Mark Vanhoenacker writes about the world; he gives you a whole new way of seeing
Jenny Colgan, author of SUNRISE BY THE SEA
Vanhoenacker is exceptionally well travelled, and an exceptionally curious and widely read observer... He doesn't waste an hour, and with every return his engagement with each city deepens... Superb
Jonathan Buckley, Times Literary Supplement
Vanhoenacker is exceptionally well travelled, and an exceptionally curious and widely read observer... He doesn't waste an hour, and with every return his engagement with each city deepens... Superb
Jonathan Buckley, Times Literary Supplement
Imagine a City is really about home... a variation on the Great Expectations narrative, with our young hero feeling uncomfortable where he grows up, flying the nest for a series of transformative experiences but discovering he can never quite leave home nor fully return
Spectator
Imagine a City is really about home... a variation on the Great Expectations narrative, with our young hero feeling uncomfortable where he grows up, flying the nest for a series of transformative experiences but discovering he can never quite leave home nor fully return
Spectator
Quietly thoughtful without being either self-conscious or -indulgent. Vanhoenacker retains a refreshing sense of good fortune and even amazement that one can step into a cylindrical metal tube and emerge hours later into different air, different sunlight and a different world picture
Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post
Quietly thoughtful without being either self-conscious or -indulgent. Vanhoenacker retains a refreshing sense of good fortune and even amazement that one can step into a cylindrical metal tube and emerge hours later into different air, different sunlight and a different world picture
Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post
Imagine a City... will enchant and even move anyone who feared in recent years for the future of both travel and urbanism
Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*
Imagine a City... will enchant and even move anyone who feared in recent years for the future of both travel and urbanism
Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*
More personal [than Skyfaring], but with the same reassuringly precise and perceptive voice
Tom Robbins, Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*
More personal [than Skyfaring], but with the same reassuringly precise and perceptive voice
Tom Robbins, Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*
What makes Mark Vanhoenacker's Imagine a City such a joy, is that this is a travel book entirely rooted in modernity and globalization... but which nonetheless retains the wide-eyed wonder, not so much of a 19th-century explorer as of a medieval pilgrim
Tim Hannigan, Asian Review of Books
What makes Mark Vanhoenacker's Imagine a City such a joy, is that this is a travel book entirely rooted in modernity and globalization... but which nonetheless retains the wide-eyed wonder, not so much of a 19th-century explorer as of a medieval pilgrim
Tim Hannigan, Asian Review of Books
In this new work, Vanhoenacker... plunges deeper into his own past growing up in Pittsfield as a gay man... His autobiographical vignettes are searching and touching, delivered with an affectionate lyricism
Pico Iyer, Air Mail
In this new work, Vanhoenacker... plunges deeper into his own past growing up in Pittsfield as a gay man... His autobiographical vignettes are searching and touching, delivered with an affectionate lyricism
Pico Iyer, Air Mail