In the summer, I recommended Bill Cheng’s debut novel, Southern Cross The Dog, in a roundup for Telegraph Travel of books set in the United States. In a series of stories, it embraces the blues, voodoo, race and the Great Flood of 1927 that devastated Mississippi. Critics have been struck by the writer’s vivid evocation of place – all the more remarkable when you consider that Cheng, a Chinese-American who grew up in New York, had never been to the South. The book is now out in paperback; courtesy of the British publisher, Picador, I’m delighted to be publishing an extract on Deskbound Traveller.