There are weekend vacations, quick getaways, and overnight jaunts. But in this border-hopping anthology of travel memoir and fiction, every trip is a big one, as an advance guard of adventurous writers—both seasoned names and fresh voices—scatter across the globe, face the pure euphoria and sheer anxiety of travel, and survive a lot of very fast living.

Reviving a time before the travel narrative devolved into puny 10-best lists, these writers don’t get sidetracked by shopping sprees, restaurant tips, or thread-counts. Told with verve, their odysseys remind us, instead, of the larger lures—the need for love, for adventure, for a new sense of place—that tempt us to leave home in the first place.

Wanderlust here comes in every shape and crosses every boundary, from Cairo to Florida, from Corfu and Rome to Vienna, Taormina, the Dordogne, and San Francisco. For Aaron Hamburger the big trip is a brave flirtation in Prague. For Dale Peck it’s an oddly romantic whirl through the clubs of London, and for Michael Klein it is the golden light of Provincetown, where everything seems possible. Duncan Fallowell sees classic sensuality in a Sicilian waiter, and Trebor Healey tries to find some sense of home along purely American backroads. Mack Friedman wanders through Mexico, Andrew Holleran confronts the wasteland of northern Florida, Bruce Benderson returns to a transformed San Francisco, Raphael Kadushin drives through a furry Yorkshire, and Ty Geltmaker remembers Rome when it really did approximate la dolce vita. Edmund White takes a double trip, through Paris and Morocco, and Martin Sherman visits a Greek island, where the intrepid traveler, just starting out, confronts his own loneliness.

A must for anyone who loves to travel, and also anyone who prefers to stay safe at home, Big Trips is an unforgettable voyage out.