Walking Backwards: Grand Tours, Minor Visitations, Miraculous Journeys and a Few Good Meals is Mark Frutkin’s literary return to ten cities and what happened there. Whether inadvertently smuggling ‘cloth’ into Istanbul, reading poetry in New Delhi to a crowd expecting a world-famous pianist, or wandering endlessly through Mantua searching for a non-existent hotel on a street that has fallen off the map, these travel stories reveal the magic at the heart of all travel.