Iberia

'Iberia is Julian Sayarer's account of his impromptu journey across Portugal and Spain, from Lisbon towards Barcelona, undertaken during a pandemic on an old blue bicycle named Miles Finding himself in Lisbon amidst a pandemic, Julian Sayarer decides simply to ride. Through hazy landscapes and on baked roads, he pedals east. During long hours in the saddle, his thoughts traverse matters big and small - hopping from post-colonial culpability to the supremacy of an orange picked at the roadside. Across 900 miles of sun-drenched olive groves, vast mountainscapes, and dormant towns glimpsed through driving rain, Sayarer's journey is punctuated by fleeting, beautiful moments of human connection. Iberia is a celebration of a shared humanity and community found in a uniquely fragile time.

Julian Sayarer has travelled widely by bicycle and as a hitchhiker. His first book, Life Cycles, tells the story of his world record for a circumnavigation by bicycle, and more Fifty Miles Wide recounts a bicycle journey through Palestine. He is a past fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and a recipient of the Stanford Dolman Book of the Year for Interstate, a depiction of an unseen USA. Iberia is his sixth book.