We make literary travel companions to cities, countries, and regions around the world. We aim to give even the armchair tourist a local’s understanding of each place: its rhythms, its customs, its contradictions, and the thousands of everyday details that make it tick. Place by place, a global literary atlas takes shape.
Our authors are chosen for both their intimate knowledge of their subject and their gifts as storytellers. Through their eyes, you’ll experience what it’s like not merely to visit a place but to live there, with the ideal combination of familiarity and wonderment.
Our books take the position that exploring the world remains one of life’s great and enduring pleasures, and that narrative is a great way to build empathy and privilege nuance: expanding what we notice and what we experience, what we carry back with us and what we leave behind.
Our name is borrowed from a species of palm native to the Amazon, Socratea exorrhiza: a tree that weaves its way through the forest in search of light, connecting its roots to those of other species, exchanging, nurturing, helping the forest grow. We aim to do the same thing by fostering something like an ethos of slow travel, creating space for curiosity, spontaneity, and unexpected connections.
Our project is international by nature. It first took root in Paris, where Nadia Krovnikoff and François Saugier founded the French imprint L’arbre qui marche, before finding its way to New York. It now reaches across Europe as well, with editions in Italian and Spanish.
