Books by Jeff Young
“It’s really a unique book. It’s about how the author, as a young man in the 1970s, drops out of his life in Liverpool and hitchhikes to Paris in search of a version of himself, which he calls ‘Wild Twin’: a shadow boy or feral drifter. He goes into this strange kind of fugue, rough sleeping, getting lost, living in slummy squats. There’s music and drugs. He lives in the red light district in Amsterdam. It’s a wonderful, kaleidoscopic, almost hallucinatory book, which really transports you to a place and a moment in time.” Read more...
Tom Parfitt, Journalist
Interviews where books by Jeff Young were recommended
Award-Winning Memoirs of 2025, recommended by Cal Flyn
We asked Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn to compile an overview of the memoirs that won major literary prizes in the 2025 awards season: from the posthumously-published autobiography of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to a graphic memoir that wrestles with a legacy of intergenerational trauma.
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1
Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China
by Noo Saro-Wiwa -
2
On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey through Occupied Myanmar
by Clare Hammond -
3
Slow Trains to Istanbul: ...And Back: A 4,570-Mile Adventure on 55 Rides
by Tom Chesshyre -
4
The Place of Tides
by James Rebanks -
5
Wayfarer: Love, loss and life on Britain’s ancient paths
by Phoebe Smith -
6
Wild Twin
by Jeff Young
The Best Travel Books of 2025, recommended by Tom Parfitt
The Best Travel Books of 2025, recommended by Tom Parfitt
Every year, the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards highlight the very best of recently published place writing, and select their ‘travel book of the year.’ We asked judge Tom Parfitt, the author and former foreign correspondent, to talk us through the six travel books that made the 2025 shortlist.
