Last November, at a dinner party in Puglia with friends in the travel industry, our table became the scene of a lively debate: Is travel writing dead? Or, if not dead in this internet and video-documentary age, is it at least less relevant? There were grumbles about the shrinking ambitions and budgets of legacy travel magazines, but my fellow diners rushed to praise and defend some of our best living travel writers who keep the art of the craft alive and well (including a few of our contributors below!). They traded favorite authors and titles, and unforgettable adventures they had taken across the salty desert of Iran or through the humid jungles of Indonesia, thanks to the mesmerizing prose of a travel narrative or transporting novel. The examples came in a torrent as I madly typed them into my iPhone, thwarted by autocorrect errors and vowing to revisit the topic.
I credit books with seeding my own wanderlust (that, and loving my globe, which in childhood I would spin, close my eyes, and halt with my finger, then look up Zanzibar or the Aleutian Islands in Collier’s Encyclopedia). Madeline made me long for the structured order of Paris, while the Tintin series stoked a craving for fantastical adventures in Tibet or Peru. At 19, after reading The Snow Leopard, I timidly approached Peter Matthiessen at a book signing to ask him a no-doubt pretentious question about Buddhism. But that book inspired me to spend six months of my junior year of college in a monastery in Bodh Gaya, India, then travel by overnight train through Kashmir to bum around Dharamsala and its wildly colorful, butter-lamp scented temples. Reading Midnight’s Children and Freedom at Midnight gave me deeper insight into the setting of my desultory journey—it’s always more thrilling to read books set in the place where you happen to be—but I also plowed through Anna Karenina on a 52-hour train ride from New Delhi to Kerala. That was a whole other intellectual journey: reading a book that is incongruous to the place, yet somehow fits—the staggeringly grand scope of the volume matching the epic length and arduousness of the rail saga.
Whenever I prepare for a big trip, I read something contextual: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani laid the ground for my drive around the southern Peloponnese, while Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia was essential background for a rugged journey to the desolate southern end of the country (where I swear I encountered the progeny of some of the rough gauchos and Welsh shepherds that populate his book). Great travel writing colors in landscape, character and chronology so you can slip mindfully into a place rather than blunder into it. It shows you how to roll with uncertainty and embrace serendipity; teaches you how to observe closely and find beauty unexpectedly; reveals truths about history, culture, colonial legacies and political upheavals at an empathetic human scale; pulls the scales off your eyes; and of course hooks you with relatable inner journeys that mirror the extraordinary outer one. We devour tales about places and cultures beyond ours—fiction and nonfiction—to better understand what connects us. “The best travel literature,” author Stanley Stewart writes below, “deals with the universal.”
With that night in Puglia still gnawing at me, I reached out to some of my dinner companions, as well as a few other exceptionally well-traveled, well-read friends, to bring you this list of travel writing that has stuck with them. It’s far from a complete library, of course! We plan to add to it over time with other recommendations, so check back when you’re brewing your next trip. Please add your own suggestions in the comments! And now, over to our readers and raconteurs. —Alex Postman
Antonio Sersale is the co-owner and general manager of Le Sirenuse, the iconic Amalfi Coast hotel, which his family has owned since 1951. Raised in rural Mexico before moving to Italy at age 12, he is an explorer at heart, traveling recently by icebreaker to the Arctic Circle and trekking through Bhutan.
Chris Wallace is a writer and photographer whose biography of the late photographer and conservationist Peter Beard, Twentieth-Century Man, was published last year by Ecco Press.
Christopher Wilmot-Sitwellis the co-owner and director of cazenove+loyd, a luxury travel company specializing in bespoke experiences across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australasia.
Jamshyd Sethna is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder of Shakti Himalaya, a luxury travel company specializing in immersive experiences in the Indian Himalayas, as well as Banyan Tours, focusing on bespoke journeys across the Indian subcontinent.
Josh Hickey is an American writer and literary curator who lives between Paris and Hydra, Greece, where he has founded a site-specific literary project, the Hydra Book Club, now entering its fifth year. He also publishes an annual journal of new writing, The Journal of the Hydra Book Club.
Kaitlin Phillips is a NYC-based publicist who writes the Substack Gift Guide “for people who read books.”
Lisa Lindblad has been traveling since early childhood, and at 20 journeyed overland from London to Nairobi—the first of countless adventures. She is the founder of NYC-based Lisa Lindblad Travel Design, where it is a practice to share reading lists with clients; her colleagues Barrie Kerper and Hannah Sari also contributed to LLTD’s list.
Lisa Borgnes Giramonteis an artist and interior designer who travels to uncover the historical past and is always planning her next adventure; her botanical watercolors are available exclusively at Nickey Kehoe. She is also a co-founder of one of our favorite travel Substacks, In Hand.
Maggie Shipstead is the New York Times-bestselling author of three novels and a short story collection. Her novel Great Circle, about a pioneering female aviator and a contemporary actress who portrays her, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Women’s Prize. She lives in L.A.
Meghan McEwen is a former magazine editor and also the co-founder of the excellent travel Substack In Hand, which explores the intersecting worlds of design, craft and travel—a celebration of people, places and objects.
Sophy Roberts is a British journalist and author with a passion for uncovering untold stories in overlooked places. Her first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, received critical acclaim for its unique blend of travel narrative and historical exploration. Her second, A Training School for Elephants, publishes next month, and retraces a long-forgotten expedition through Africa while delving into the complexities of colonial history and its enduring impacts.
Stanley Stewart is the author of three acclaimed travel books and several hundred articles based on journeys across five continents. His latest, In the Empire of Genghis Khan, about a 1,000-mile horse ride across Mongolia, has been translated into 10 languages.
Tyler Dillon is a travel planner with Trufflepig. Raised in Georgia, Tyler started traveling in high school and immersed himself in various roles across China, Mongolia, Myanmar, Bhutan, Peru and Ireland including guiding, writing, and trip planning. His excellent Substack, The Timbuktu Review, is a trove of meditations on travel, memory, the written word and the human condition. (ICYMI, we interviewed Tyler for our first Substack podcast here!)
Will Bolsover is the founder and CEO of Natural World Safaris, which he established in 2005 to combine his guiding experience and passion for wildlife conservation. Spanning diverse ecosystems, from the savannas of Africa to the icy realms of the Arctic, and his pioneering fieldwork has led him to craft unique experiences, such as Gabon’s first gorilla trekking safaris.
William Gilchrist is a stylist and creative director living between the Lover, Naples, and the Mother, London. Currently researching maritime sourced manufacturing, always researching the joys of life.
What travel book (non-fiction narrative or fiction) has had the greatest impact on you personally, and why?
“As a child, I loved any story where the children flew out of a window, lived in a hotel, solved mysteries with their friends, or travelled to supernatural realms. The Narnia series by C.S. Lewis was nothing less than an obsession. I read and reread each of the 7 books countless times. Like many children, I longed to find my own portal to a parallel world, and I was excited as much by the adventure as by the terrifying danger. It was, however, James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl that began to excite my imagination in a more grown-up way. The brutality of the story, James’ loneliness, and the bonds of friendship strengthened by the very uncertain travel situation inside of a giant peach left me changed. Of course James and his friends land in Central Park, what a relief! I re-read this book well into adulthood. Later, as a student, I read Walt Whitman. The poem, “Song of the Open Road” in Leaves of Grass,remains a personal poetic travel (and life) manifesto. It is a supreme call to leave, to go outside, to adventure, to self realization, to authenticity. Allons! Whoever you are, come travel with me!”—Josh Hickey
“I had been planning a long solo hike in the Swedish Arctic before my mom died in the summer of 2022, and I think without Wildby Cheryl Strayed I would have cancelled it. Instead, I took strength from Cheryl’s example and went and backpacked more than 200 miles by myself, which ended up being a difficult and powerful experience that taught me a lot about what it means to just keep going.” —Maggie Shipstead
“I remember reading V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization (1976) – the second book from his India trilogy – in the arches of my boarding school library in South India and coming across a scene that remade my idea of what travel writing could be. Naipaul is at a party in Delhi and a woman, who he describes as married to a foreign academic, “swinging from vine to greasy vine in the grove of academe,” starts telling him how the poor of India are beautiful. “They’re more beautiful than anyone in this room,” she says. A pause ensues, then, with an electrifying growl, Naipaul stops her short, “But now she was beginning to lie.” He then proceeds to take the lie apart limb from limb. The poor are not beautiful. They are a race apart from the well-to-do, a dwarf race, stunted and misshapen by generations of malnourishment. Their bright picturesque costumes cannot save them. Naipaul then turns his anger on the woman herself, and the privilege and safety that allows her to speak so superciliously about the grinding horror of Indian poverty. The glorification of poverty was something Mahatma Gandhi himself had instilled in us, and I was deeply shocked to read this demolition of one of our founding fictions. But I fell in love with Naipaul that day, empowered by the brutal clarity of his vision. I thought this is what good writers do—they set you free of lies.” —Aatish Taseer
“The first travel book that I adored, and awoke me to the potential of the genre, was Peter Levi’s The Light Garden of the Angel King, a chronicle of a journey he made in Afghanistan. Levi travelled in the 1970s, a distant time before Afghanistan suffered the invasions both of Islamist fanatics and foreign armies. His travel companion was the then-unknown Bruce Chatwin. Oxford Don, Jesuit priest, poet, eccentric, Levi understood the boundlessness of travel literature. He understood how commodious is the genre. It can range from natural history to art history, from personal memoir to spirit of place, while touching scores of bases in between. I loved the beauty of Levi’s prose, and the lightness of his touch. The book was never just about Afghanistan; it resonated in the way that all good literature does. I have not reread The Light Garden for some time – it made such an impact that perhaps I worry it might need to be revalued, like first love, as the naïve enthusiasm of youth. But I remember it fondly for bringing poetry to the art of writing about place. ❥ My other travel literature passions are catholic. Graham Greene’s Journey Without Maps is one of the great travel books of the 20th century. A 350 mile journey on foot through Liberia in the 1930’s inevitably becomes a young man’s journey of self-discovery as resonant as any Greene novel. ❥ Norman Lewis’ books are a masterclass in travel literature – unfussy focused prose, always thoughtful and revealing. I wouldn’t have been without A Dragon Apparentwhen travelling through Myanmar. ❥ VS Naipul’s A Bend in the River, though a novel, can be embraced as a kind of travel literature – the journey into the interior, the sense of dislocation and impending doom I felt myself travelling up the Nile into war-torn Uganda in the 1980s. ❥ It would be wrong not to mention Patrick Leigh Fermor’s wonderful books, and the seriousness of Colin Thubron’s books about Russia and China, in an age when so much travel writing can be a look-at-me exercise.” —Stanley Stewart
“I fell in love with Naipaul that day, empowered by the brutal clarity of his vision. I thought this is what good writers do—they set you free of lies.” —Aatish Taseer
“I met the journalist and author Tiziano Terzani when I was 11 and living in Laos—he wrote a book about his travels around SE Asia (avoiding all air travel), called A Fortune Teller Told Me, that not only brought to life this part of the world in the grip of unshackling itself from the decades of colonialism and conflict; it also determined a personal commitment to a life of travel and writing. Not only did Terzani make a huge impression in his flowing white robes, long hair and bare feet, but he wrote in a way that interwove myth and memoir, fairy tale and fact, which was captivating to an 11 year old. Travel memoirs have remained a favorite genre since.” —Catherine Fairweather
“The Oxford or Times Atlas. From when I was a child, I have been travelling and living ‘abroad’. I have always lost myself in a fine atlas. From randomly opening it to seeking out new places, the Atlas (Oxford or Times editions were my favourites) has been a gateway that offers limitless possibilities and surprises and feeds the imagination. ❥ A Sea Vagabond’s Worldby Bernard Moitessier. Part technical manual, part diary, Moitessier is a fine example that paradise can only exist sharing a bed with hell; it’s inevitable, so best be prepared and he helps us. My love of sail and the seas began as a child in Mauritius, and he remains a hero to many—the man whose unassailable lead in the first-ever single-handed, nonstop around-the-world race concluded that he’d rather alter course and head to Tahiti. Unlike his journey, this is a book where you can head to a port and drop anchor, then push off again as you prefer. ❥ Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger. Having lived in Oman and the UAE, the desert and desert cultures were a strong presence, and being a visitor was also clear. We are all travellers to amazing places and guests of amazing cultures. Thesiger is a great example of this—we can all learn from where we find/take ourselves and enjoy. ❥ Ring of Fire by Lawrence Blair and Lorne Blair. I had the good fortune to meet Lawrence when I lived in Bali for a stint. This is from the time when travel and adventure were truly a magical mystery tour. A bridge spanning old-school adventure and wonder with the advent of international tourism, these two brothers witnessed cultures and climes that were disappearing. Their enthusiasm, naive approach and sense of wonder are contagious and heartwarming.” —William Gilchrist
“I have travelled in India more than to any other country and love it. My first trip there was in the early 1990s, to Kerala, and I fell in love with it. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth had just been published in a three-volume edition, which I travelled with and discarded as I went along. That book and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, also published in the 1990s, are my two favourite fiction books about India and live with me whenever I visit.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
“A good travel book, at least to me, is transporting. The author has to capture what makes that place singular and special. Blood Knots by Luke Jennings brings readers to the English countryside. It’s evocative and just romantic enough (but not too romantic). There’s a lot of fishing for the anglers among us, but this book is about so much more than that. History, war, friendship. It’s profound but never heavy. A book I recommend in the strongest possible terms. I’ll buy it from you if you don’t like it.” —David Coggins
“Power of One or Tandia by Bryce Courtenay – I read them when I was probably 10-12 years old, and the story of a young boy making his way in Africa really sparked my imagination. I could literally smell it and see it all; I found it magical. ❥ Brazzaville Beach or An Ice Cream War by William Boyd – love the humour and wacky ‘catastrophic’ colonial era and what it represented with the changing of the times. And some of it is just very funny! ❥ Mimi and Toutou Go Forth, by Giles Foden—amazing story of how these steamships were transported from South Africa up across the continent into Central Africa and onto the Lake.” —Will Bolsover
“In the 1970s, writer Edward Packard started putting together stories inspired by bedtime tales he was telling his children, but he wanted a sense of agency in the weave, so he had moments in the book where you could make a decision as a reader, you could choose what the story was going to do. This was done by giving the reader a choice of flipping to the next page, or to some other page in the book, thus making each read of the book a different story with a different outcome. They were called “Choose your own Adventure” books and they left a mark deep and wide on me. The first one I picked up was Choose Your Own Adventure: The Secret Treasure of Tibet, and that, too, sent fractures down deep into my psyche that created a need and want to go to the Himalayas, to see and feel them as an adult. The impact upon me was a sense of agency, the idea of choice, freedom to decide, and that is what I have held all these years later, that I can become inspired by place and one day, stand up and start walking towards that place to see it myself. That I can choose my own adventure in this life as well; it was a powerful analogy for my 8-year-old brain that changed the way I think and live.” —Tyler Dillon
“In my impressionable teens, I devoured Lesley Blanche’s The Wilder Shores of Love (not known for its prose), with its stories of four Victorian women who left Europe for lives of adventure in the Middle East. Another of her books, Journey Into the Mind’s Eye, also captivated me because of a visitor to the child’s bedside, a mysterious gentleman they call The Traveler, who spins tales of faraway places and brings with him exotic gifts. Later on in the book the child, now a grown woman, travels by train through the birch-forested Siberian steppe in search of him, or memories? Mesmerizing. Finally, Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi Strauss reconciled my twin passions for travel and the ‘other’ through his ruminations on the need to leave home, on religions and civilizations, on nakedness and beauty.” —Lisa Lindblad
“A little-known, partly autobiographical novel by James Michener, The Fires of Spring. A character, Daniel, says to a young boy, “Reading and travel are the two best things besides people. Travel is best, but some books are very great. You should read all the books you can get before you’re twenty. If you don’t need glasses by the time you’re thirty, you can consider your life wasted. Maybe books are best, because you don’t have to have money to read. And there’s this difference, too: A man can travel all over the world and come back the same kind of fool he was when he started. You can’t do that with books.” —Barrie Kerper
Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate all the Brutes. ❥ Samantha Harvey, Orbital. ❥W G Sebald, Rings of Saturn. —Sophy Roberts
“I’m in Oman at the moment expressly because of Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands — a book that has been a huge influence on my life and work. In fact, it is probably fair to say that Thesiger’s book, about his travels in the Empty Quarter from 1945-1950, along with the pictures he took there at the time, are what made me want to do whatever it is I do now. Granted, parts of the book and the language he used have aged a bit, but it is still just incredible.” —Chris Wallace
“The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, set in the second largest city in Egypt, was the first writing to draw me to Egypt (unless you count 12-year-old Cleopatra’s fake diary for children). Any traveler interested in that area should start with Justine, a love triangle that is mostly about three people in love with one place. I was in Cyprus last weekend, as well as the occupied zone to the North, a place Durrell frequented. He wrote a book, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, about his time there, though I haven’t read it myself. People find his prose purple, but I love him.” —Kaitlin Phillips
Book that sparked a trip to a certain place?
“Down and Out in Paris and Londonby George Orwell created an overwhelming desire to be young, broke, and live a precarious life in Paris, which I did. ❥ Interzone by William Burroughs made me long to live in Tangier’s ‘International Zone’ of the 1950s, then a lawless zone of spies, money laundering, drugs and sex. I was born too late to take full advantage, but have been many times and remain enthralled by both the ghosts of the Interzone era and the contemporary Moroccan writers and artists living there today. ❥ Annapurna by Maurice Herzog is a classic mountaineering adventure story, which recounts the first team of climbers to summit a peak at over 8,000M altitude. The suspense, the waiting, the immensity of the mountains, the weather, the amputations, the broken bones, the bravery all make this an absolutely terrifying read. After reading it, I went on a Himalayan trek in Northern India, and while I did not summit an 8,000M peak, I did live in fear and oxygen deprivation and loved every second.” —Josh Hickey
“God’s Mountain by Erri de Lucca introduced me to a magical place filled with mystery and magic, Naples. ❥ TheLonely Planet Series – though out of favour, I think it would be remiss of me not to mention the huge impact these books of had on us and the help they gave us to understanding what a wonderful world we live in. —William Gilchrist
“When, as a twenty-five-year-old, I travelled from Venice to Lahore by land, via Turkey, Syria, Yemen and Iran, my desire to see the places in between India (where I had grown up) and London (where I lived) owed a great deal to Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana. From later books of Byron’s – An Essay on India and his appraisal of Edwin Lutyens’ building of New Delhi – I came to understand how much buildings meant to him, but, at the time, I just wanted to fill in the gap between where I began, and where I decided to live, in the hope of reducing the absurdity of balancing different societies in my head.” —Aatish Taseer
“Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert K. Massie’s 1967 nonfiction book about the last Russian tsar and his family sparked a mini-obsession with Russian history when I was a teenager. When the bones of Nicholas II’s family were going to be interred in St. Petersburg after decades spent buried in the woods outside Yekaterinburg, I begged my mom to take me there. This was 1998; I was fifteen. The actual ceremony was underwhelming, but I’m really glad I saw Russia at that particular in-between historical moment.” —Maggie Shipstead
“The novels of Saul Bellow (New York and Chicago) and the amazing stories of John Cheever (New York), which prompted explorations of both these great cities in my late 20’s/early 30’s.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“The Missionaries by Norman Lewis sparked the first of a number of trips to the Brazilian Amazon and has made me very sensitive to the effects of change on indigenous people all over the world, but particularly in Brazil, and most recently during the Bolsonaro years when the destruction of the Amazon rainforest came starkly into focus again.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
Philip Marsden’s The Crossing Place to Armenia. ❥ The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (Nepal). ❥ Caroline Eden’s Black Sea to Istanbul.—Catherine Fairweather
“It’d be tough to overstate Agatha Christie’s lasting impact on the way we think about travel. Obviously, cruising up the Nile and riding on the Orient Express—two of the most coveted trips I can think of—owe a debt to her. But so too does at least part of my trip to Baghdad in 2023.” —Chris Wallace
“Mathias Enard, Compass. It won the Prix Goncourt. It is a book on orientalism and the fascination it has held in our collective imagination over the years. It is also a nostalgic look at the Middle East, as well as a very beautiful love story. I read it while travelling through the desert of Alula in Saudi Arabia.” —Antonio Sersale
Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana – Central Asia. ❥ Bruce Chatwin, Songlines – Australia. —Sophy Roberts
“Recently I purchased a book online by Peter Matthiessen on the Kingdom of Mustang in Nepal, a book called East of Lo Monthang. (Mustang being the misunderstood English name for the region, a strange version of Monthang, but the region is called the Kingdom of Lo). This part of the Himalayas was walled off by geography and politics until fairly recently. Matthiessen was one of those characters out there in the ether doing things, an always-conservationist. He and his friend George Plimpton started The Paris Review (while Peter was working for the CIA using the review as a cover, as the story goes). His big splash was a book called The Snow Leopard. I have been a fan for some time, as he wrote often about places I lived and worked. The book arrived in the mail as I was preparing dinner for my family, and I cut open the brown paper package to have a slip of paper fall out with the words: “From the library of American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and CIA officer Peter Matthiessen.” I then cracked open the spine of the book and on the first page was a sticker, an Ex Libris or bookplate that read, “from the library of Peter Matthiessen.” At first I thought it was a scam, so I took to the internet and the phone. I found an identical looking sticker on a website for a bookseller named Ken Lopez, somewhere in Massachusetts. There was a contact page with an email address and a phone number, so I emailed and then called. I felt like Dustin Hoffman or Robert Redford in All the President’s Men. “My name is Tyler Dillon, I have a strange question about Peter Matthiessen…..” I told him the story of the book and the sticker, and I asked Ken if he knew anything about this book and collection. It felt less like lightning and more like the flow of a large river in a slow section, the feeling of a large moving force with power gently guiding you along; on the path of wonder and awe. Ken began to tell me about how, when Peter passed away, he was in charge of his collection and library, about how there were hundreds of boxes full of books, how 65 boxes of those books were given away to donation programs, about how he knew Peter and worked with Peter on cataloging and selling his letters, working with donating Peter’s collection of Native American history to the Navajo community Library of New Mexico. And how Ken printed and designed a little sticker with red lines around the words to be used as the Ex Libris in the entire collection, to make note of it in case anyone out there was sparked by the same bolt, with the words, “from the Library of Peter Matthiessen” written on it in black print. I like to tell people I am not superstitious, but of course I am. Something like this, the serendipity of it all, chimed and I needed to go to the Kingdom of Mustang, I needed to go to Nepal. It wasn’t just the coincidence, the photos and the stories Peter has in the book, the descriptions of the villages and valleys and the people. At the same time a new hotel had been built in this region, one that was getting a lot of press and spurring others to want to travel there. Working in travel allows for the lightning to strike in moments like this, and within the year, was in Mustang, in the pages of that book.” —Tyler Dillon
“In Patagonia is, for me, the first modern travel book. It’s spare and beautiful and I think made many people want to go to Patagonia, including me. When you read it you want to go all the way down.” —David Coggins
“The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, by Fernand Braudel. In this singular book I was introduced to transhumance, the twice-yearly migration of shepherds and flocks from the highlands to the lowlands, one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Mediterranean world.” —Barrie Kerper
Which book opened your eyes to see a place or culture in a completely new way?
“Ryszard Kapuściński’s very unique blend of journalistic and emotional writing surpasses reportage. He draws the reader so deeply into time and place, offering a perspective we would have perhaps never imagined of Poland in Nobody Leaves: Impressions of Poland, Iran in The Shah of Shahs, or Ethiopia in The Emperor. Seguby Maryse Condé is a glorious and tragic story of multiple generations of the Bambara royal family of Ségou in Mali. It is a stunning epic, which also gives insight into the society of Ségou as is succumbed to the waves of change including the trauma of the slave trade—all from an African perspective.” —Josh Hickey
“City of Djinns by William Dalrymple. I visited Delhi regularly during University and remained quite unimpressed till I read this book in the late ‘90s and Delhi was never again the same for me.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“I found Ramos Gavillan’s 16th century account of how the figure of the Virgin Mary came to acquire an indigenous form at the hands of Francisco Tito Yupanqui a total revelation. Some of those Spanish chroniclers of the new world could be racists and bigots, but many, such as Bernabé Cobo, were serious travelers, full of the wonder of that encounter. Gavillan was serious, too, and wrote with great compassion the story of how Yupanqui, facing tremendous adversity from a Spanish clergy who instinctively felt that the Virgin ought to be a white European woman, overcame all odds, and enshrined his brown virgin at the Sanctuary of Copacabana in Bolivia. I love medieval travel writing generally. The Uzbek polymath Al-Beruni’s 11th century account of India is one of the greatest travel books ever written. I also love all those friars, like William of Rubruck setting off in the 13th century to the court of the Great Khan Möngke. But antiquity does not afford infallibility. Ibn Battuta, for instance, was a hustler and a fraud, and it shows several centuries later.” —Aatish Taseer
“The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski: I was lucky enough to spend some of my formative years in Africa; being European, I think his passion and respect for Africa is the perfect introduction to the continent that gave, gives and is looted by so many.” —William Gilchrist
“Erica Allen-Kim wrote a book called Building Little Saigon about Vietnamese communities, architecture, and urban planning in North America. Diaspora, a word which is rooted in across and scattered, is something in the business of travel that I think is overlooked. This book shines a light on the theater of place mixed with the reality of place, that there is just as much Nepal in NYC as there is in the Solukhumbu valley, that you can eat ‘authentic’ Sicilian food in Toledo, or Northern Chinese cuisine in London, that there are pockets of the lived in places of our cities that can transport one to different worlds in an instant. Reading this book helped me realise I can go to Vietnam for the afternoon in Toronto and it is not bounded by borders or maps.” —Tyler Dillon
“Wild by Jay Griffiths was an eye opener, especially regarding the continuing negative impact of missionaries on indigenous peoples and culture.” —Catherine Fairweather
“I was leading a trip to Myanmar in 2016 and read a review of a new book called Dadland by Keggie Carew. A very small part of it was her father’s wartime memories in Burma, but it turned out to be more about a parent-child relationship when the parent has dementia, which my father had at the time. It really resonated.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
“When I read In Praise of Shadows by Junchiro Tanizaki, I felt a familiarity with aspects of the Japanese culture that was completely surprising to me…as if it were a part of me and I of it. — Lisa Lindblad
“The ones that stick with me are the ones around the Rwanda genocide. This was such a horrific time in human history and a real ‘holding the mirror’ up moment that we failed to live up to. Multiple books based around this including: We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, Shake Hands With the Devil by Romeo Dallaire, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche.” —Will Bolsover
Taran Khan, Shadow City —Sophy Roberts
“One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I think fiction is as informative, if not more, to get a glimpse into a place or culture and this classic is one of my absolute favourites. Obviously not a specific place, but it opened me to Latin America and I have been seeking aspects of Macondo ever since (fortunately one that will always elude me). ❥ The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski – I was lucky enough to spend some of my formative years in Africa; being European, I think his passion and respect for Africa is the perfect introduction to the continent that gave, gives and is looted by so many. —William Gilchrist
What book(s) do you always recommend when someone is visiting X country/city/place?/What books best capture the essence of a place or time?
**There are many books mentioned elsewhere in this list that could be included below—just search a country!
AFRICA
North Africa
“Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique Land, a truly humane sojourn in Egypt, is a thrilling example of breaking the tyranny of the Western gaze.” —Aatish Taseer
“Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet filled me with a longing for Egypt.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“I have recently been re-reading Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt, which are a delight – lively, enthusiastic, chatty, with perceptive impressions of the Nile Valley in the mid-19th century. They make a telling contrast to Flaubert’s letters, who travelled in the same period and whose letters are assembled in Flaubert in Egypt– less pompous colonial officials, more prostitutes with Flaubert. Always an exponent of economy in writing, his romantic but understated descriptions are wonderful – ‘the [Egyptian] sky full of bluish pigeon-breast tints.’” —Stanley Stewart
“The richly textured Naguib Mafouz Cairo trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street, all of which are centered on the lives of a family between the two world wars. ❥ Out of Egypt: A Memoir by André Aciman (Alexandria). Aciman’s bittersweet story of growing up in Egypt and then having to leave it is very evocative of time and place. ❥ And The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell . —LLTD
“Edith Wharton’s In Morocco is an unexpected jewel of a book.” —Aatish Taseer
“The Sheltering Sky and Collected Short Stories by Paul Bowles. I just had to visit Morocco after reading him.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“The Sheltering Sky perfectly captures the post WW2 sense of alienation and romance in a strange landscape, but I love Paul Bowles’ second novel, Let It Come Down, equally. Set among the “Tangerinas” (the glamorous Tangier elite), it’s Less Than Zero meets “Casablanca” —more parties, more decadence, and more corruption than The Sheltering Sky, and his spare stylized prose always packs a wallop.” —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
“The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles (Fez). A powerful novel that conveys the essence of Morocco and Moroccans.”—LLTD
“Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893-1956, by Gavin Maxwell. An extraordinary story about the brothers Madani and T’hami El Glaoui, chiefs of an insignificant mountain tribe who deposed two Sultans, became the true rulers of Morocco, shook the whole French political structure, and with their downfall added an uncomfortable word to the French language: glaouise means, in French political jargon, “betrayed.” ❥ The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. ❥ Spirits of Tangier by Tessa Codrington. A wonderful array of portraits of Tangier’s vast and varied cast of characters.” —LLTD
East Africa
“Our Turn to Eat, Michaela Wrong – Kenya.” —Catherine Fairweather
I Dreamed of Africa, Karen Blixen —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
“Three books written about the British colonial period: Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood by Elspeth Huxley, and West With the Night by Beryl Markham. Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway. One of Hemingway’s few non-fiction books, a reflective account about a hunting expedition in East Africa that he went on with his second wife, Pauline. The Tree Where Man Was Born by Peter Matthiessen. An account of his journey through East Africa over the course of a number of years in the 1960s.” —LLTD
South Africa
“A wonderful and very hard look on South Africa can be had by J.M. Coetzee in Disgrace. A masterpiece that should be read by all.” —Antonio Sersale
West Africa
“Equator by Michael Sousa Tavares, a novel about the period of Portuguese and British colonialism in the tiny west African islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.” —Catherine Fairweather
“The Fearful Void, Geoffrey Moorhouse. Not a month goes by where this book doesn’t pop into my head. Moorhouse’s quest to be the first person to cross the African Sahara from west to east, by himself and by camel, is an unputdownable read. He was totally afraid to go, which is why he went: “He realized he had been a man who had lived with fear all of his life and he believed it was the most corrosive element attacking the goodness of the human spirit.” Moorhouse bares his soul to the reader, warts and all, and his countless mishaps and emotional struggles are what make his story so relatable and endearing, and why it was hailed an instant classic upon publication. If you’ve ever struggled with fear (up goes my hand), keep this book nearby for a shot of courage anytime you need it.” —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
THE AMERICAS
North America
“Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley – the classic USA road trip in the early ‘60s.” –Catherine Fairweather
“I love Kaui Hart Hemming’s novel The Descendantsboth as a delightful piece of writing and also as a bridge between the fantasy and reality of life in modern Hawaii.” —Maggie Shipstead
“When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago. An engaging, sad, occasionally humorous and finally uplifting memoir of growing up in both a rural area of the island and in San Juan (and eventually New York City).” —LLTD
“A Visit to Don Otavio by Sybille Bedford, for a thrilling journey across Mexico in the ‘60s. Think overflowing buses that get robbed by bandits and a remote hacienda at Lake Chapala.” —Meghan McEwan
“I love Rebecca West’s Survivors in Mexico, an unfinished book by a genius writer, with sentences such as, ‘Here these walls are painted colors that are special to Mexico, touching variants of periwinkle blue, a faded acid pink, the terra-cotta one has seen on Greek vases, a tear-stained elegiac green.’ While we’re on the subject, I should say I love Sybille Bedford’s A Visit to Don Otavio and Aldous Huxley’s Beyond the Mexique Bay. DH Lawrence’s essays on Mexico are terrific, too. Come to think of it, it’s a fantastic genre—the English on Mexico. Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, though a novel, is also a masterpiece in that line. Also Frances Calderon de la Barca’s delicious Life in Mexico. She was the Scottish-born wife of the first Spanish minister to Mexico in the nineteenth century.” —Aatish Taseer
“A Visit to Don Otavio by Sybille Bedford, for a thrilling journey across Mexico in the ‘60s. Think overflowing buses that get robbed by bandits and a remote hacienda at Lake Chapala.” —Meghan McEwan
“A Visit to Don Otavio, Sybille Bedford (Mexico) Dense and exotic, this eclectic travelogue of Sybille’s expedition to Mexico with her girlfriend Esther Murphy reads like a mashup of MFK Fisher meets Martha Gellhorn.”—Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
“Mexico: Places and Pleasures, by Kate Simon. A wise and excellent guide by an incomparable observer and writer. Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art: From the Collection of Fomento Cultural Banamex, by Fernandez de Calderon, Candida and Alberto Sarmiento.” —LLTD
South America
“In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin – I’ve never been to Patagonia, but the characters Chatwin encounters on his travels there are so rich, vivid, personal and quirky it can only be accurate.” —Josh Hickey
“WH Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago is about Argentine estancia life in the 1800s, but is so gentle and slow in its child’s eye observations of nature.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
“Far Away and Long Ago by William Hudson about growing up in the Argentine Pampas at the end of the 19th century.” —Catherine Fairweather
“Dervla Murphy’s Eight Feet in the Andes, a wonderful account of travelling by mule through the altiplano [Peru] with her nine-year-old-daughter.” —Aatish Taseer
ANTARCTICA
“Sara Wheeler’s memoir Terra Incognitais a great read for anyone going to Antarctica.” —Maggie Shipstead
“The Worst Journey in the World, Cherry Apsley-Garrard (1922) – Apsley-Garrard was the youngest and one of the only surviving members of Scott’s doomed expedition to the South Pole and his memoir of their hardships in this frigid Antarctic hell makes for a gripping read. What elevates the book to a classic, however, is the record Garrard gives of his team’s spirit and grace in the face of heartbreaking odds. It’s a stirring testament to the tenacity, endurance and—yes—humor that lies at the core of the British character.” —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
ASIA
South/Southeast Asia
Afghanistan
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Eric Newby (Afghanistan) Simultaneously gripping and laugh-out-loud funny, a London fashion buyer neads to Afghanistan with his friend to conquer the notoriously dangerous and unsummited peak of Mir Samir, and faces peril and unrelenting hardships on his journey.—Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
Bhutan
Read Borges in Bhutan, it just fits. —Tyler Dillon
India
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie. Nine Lives, William Dalrymple. India, A Million Mutinies Now, V.S. Naipaul. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry. Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines.—Jamshyd Sethna
“Octavio Paz’s In Light of India is a small miracle of a book, a Mexican Nobel laureate, poet and diplomat, searching for the ‘inner controversy’ of a country not entirely dissimilar from his.” —Aatish Taseer
“William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns is a ‘must’ for any visitor to Delhi. I far prefer his early books to his big historic tomes.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
“I always love reading William Dalrymple while travelling through India, which he describes to perfection through a number of wonderful books such as White Mughal, The Last Mughal, City of Djinns. I would also suggest reading A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.” —Antonio Sersale
“Patrick French’s Younghusband is a fabulous first book about the last great Imperial Adventurer.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
“A Princess Remembers by Devi Gayatri – Rajasthan, a world that passed away. ❥ The Raj Quartet byPaul Scott – The last years of the British Raj. ❥ Freedom at Midnight by Collins and Lapierre about Partition in India.” —LLTD
Indonesia
“Jon Swain’s The River of Time reads like a confessional of the author’s time here in Indochina in the tumultuous and bloody period of the mid ‘70s.” —Catherine Fairweather
“The Feather Thief by Kirk W Johnson – I read it while in Indonesia as it has its roots there, with Alfred Wallace and the Victorian obsession with exotic bird plumage, but it is really a 21st Century crime novel.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
Laos
“Souvankham Thammavongsa’s book of poetry called Light and her book How to Pronounce Knife. She grew up in Toronto, but her family were Laos refugees. In reading her work, you can pick up things a history book on Laos forgets to mention.” —Tyler Dillon
Nepal/Himalayas
“Mustang Bhot in Fragments by Manjushree Thapa. I love this collection of essays from the early ‘90s.” —Tyler Dillon
“Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas, by Jamaica Kincaid. This book is a gem written by the wonderfully talented wordsmith, Jamaica Kincaid. The Himalayas fall prey to many of those books of privilege, some conquering of some mountain range, trials and tribulations, and while this book has trials and tribulations, they aren’t the usual sort we find in most travel literature about Nepal. This is through the lens of a reluctant hiker who really is just a gardener who desperately wants to add to her collection. A flower lover who is led to hike through the mountains not in search of her soul, or meaning, or spiritual lifting (she is neither eating, praying, nor loving), but instead so she can have a wonderful garden back home. I like how some obsessions lead us to certain places. It’s why I like surfing and biking, not because I am good at these activities (I am a horrible surfer), but because it provides an excuse for me to seek out places I never would have without this tool. Kincaid speaks to this, and it is magical.” —Tyler Dillon
“The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen. An account of his journey onto the Tibetan Plateau with George Schaller in search of the snow leopard but, as with all journeys, this is an internal one as well.” —LLTD
Sri Lanka
Michael Ondaatje’sRunning in the Family—Tyler Dillon
Vietnam
The Lover by Marguerite Duras – LLTD
East Asia
“A Fortune Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East, by Tiziano Terzani. Full of magic.” —LLTD
Japan
“If you travel to Japan, I would suggest reading Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which gives you a fantastic insight into the youth and the terrible problems of isolation in their society.” —Antonio Sersale
“I was recently in Japan and have found a yet deeper appreciation for Donald Ritchie’s Inland Sea, as well as his smaller essays and tractates.” —Aatish Taseer
“In Praise of Shadows by Junchiro Tanizaki. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.” —LLTD
Mongolia
“Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Quest for God.Jack works on a theory I like, a theory that religious freedoms in North America were inspired by Mongolian histories. A fun read that gives a wonderful slice of history in a fun way.” —Tyler Dillon
Central Asia
“This is for anyone out there keen on modern or ancient Silk Road histories: Peter Hopkirk’s Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Central Asia.” —Tyler Dillon
Northern Asia
Siberia
Sylvain Tesson, Consolations of the Forest, Siberia —Sophy Roberts
Colin Thubron,In Siberia—Sophy Roberts
Western Asia
Turkey
“Strolling Through Istanbul by Hilary Sumner-Boyd and John Freely. A veritable bible of the city. Istanbul: An Inspired Companion Guide (in The Collected Traveler series) by Barrie Kerper. Wonderful, in-depth articles about all aspects of Istanbul and Turkey paired with an A to Z Miscellany, poems, and interviews with noteworthy experts. Portrait of a Turkish Family by Irfan Orga. Memorable story that portrays daily life of regular Istanbul residents during the time Turkey became a republic. The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay. Witty and delightful novel with eccentric characters and a terrific opening line: “‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.” My Name is Red and Snow by Orhan Pamuk, both engrossing novels that also tackle serious questions of secularism and religious fanaticism. Turkish Delights by Philippa Scott. Small illustrated hardcover with informative and interesting text highlighting the most beautiful arts and traditions of Turkey. Like Water on Stone by Dana Walrath. A fictional tale of the Armenian genocide beautifully and heartbreakingly told in verse.” —LLTD
EUROPE
Austria
“The Post Office Girl, Stefan Zweig. If you’re new to Stefan Zweig, this is a very good place to start. The story of a penniless village girl who receives a Cinderella invitation from her aunt to stay at a luxury Alpine spa, it starts off stylishly and spirals disturbingly downward, a Zweig literary hallmark. But oh! the textiles! From fur-lined cloaks to embroidered bedspreads and felted alpenwear, you’ll completely forget that outside it’s 90 in the shade. Interesting tidbit: Wes Anderson based The Grand Budapest Hotel partly on Zweig’s description of the hotel in The Post Office Girl.” —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
France
“A Moveable Feast by Hemingway—the artistic, romantic spirit of Paris of the Lost Generation in the 20s.” —Catherine Fairweather
“Two Towns in Provence and As They Were by MFK Fisher, who writes as evocatively about place (Provence in the ‘70s) as she does about food.” —Meghan McEwan
“Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne. A magnificent book (only the hardcover edition has inserts of photos and artwork). ❥ Paris by John Russell. A rare coffee table book with outstanding text (by a former art critic of The New York Times) and hundreds of splendid illustrations. ❥ Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet by Otto Friedrich. Using Manet’s succèsde scandale, ‘Olympia,’ as the centerpiece of the book, Friedrich puts Paris of the late 1800s in the spotlight. ❥ In the South of France by Don Krohn (Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon). Small hardcover with sensitive and informative text paired with color photos of uncommon images. ❥ Corsica: Portrait of a Granite Island by Dorothy Carrington. Definitive, exhaustively researched book on an island that still has an authentic insular culture.” —LLTD
“Keeping it in the family… my dad’s great book, Paris in Winter—a loving illustrated memoir of trips to the City of Light.” —David Coggins
A Compass Error and Jigsaw, both by Sybille Bedford (South of France) —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
Greece
“The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell – One of the most majestic texts describing the Greek Islands.Maniand Roumeliby Patrick Leigh Fermor – The most majestic texts describing continental Greece. The Sleepwalker by Margarita Karapanou – No other writer has so accurately captured the dark beauty and tension of Hydra Island.” —Josh Hickey
“My Family and Other Animals – first in TheCorfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell.” —Catherine Fairweather
“Laurence Durrell’s Corfu Trilogy (especially My Family and Other Animals) about Corfu in the ‘30s, through the delightful prism of his eccentric family experience.” —Meghan McEwan
“Anyone heading to the South Peloponnese needsto read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani, in which he traverses the harsh (then inhospitable) landscape of the Mani Peninsula by foot, offering an ethnographic (but still intimate) deep-dive into the culture and people along the way. His travels took place before the region opened up to tourism of any kind (sealed off by lack of infrastructure), but because the landscape looks just as rugged and natural today, it’s not a stretch to imagine his adventures unfolding in front of you in real-time.” —Meghan McEwan
“The Sleepwalker by Margarita Karapanou: No other writer has so accurately captured the dark beauty and tension of Hydra Island.” —Josh Hickey
“My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (Corfu). Charming memoir, ‘soaked in the sunshine of Corfu,’ of the Durrell family’s five-year sojourn on the island. ❥ Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss (Crete). Dramatic story of the kidnapping of Nazi General Karl Kreipe, by Moss and Patrick Leigh Fermor, in 1944. ❥ Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell (Cyprus). The most balanced and must-read book on the partition of the island. ❥ Eleni: A Savage War, A Mother’s Love, and a Son’s Revenge by Nicholas Gage (northwestern Greece). Many visitors to Greece are unaware of the savage civil war that erupted in the country after World War II. This is the unforgettable, gut-wrenching story of that war in the far northern corner of Greece near the Albanian border and the arrest, torture, and execution of Gage’s mother. ❥ Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières (Kefalonia). Lyrical and humorous novel that captures the island’s quirky inhabitants at an innocent time (1940) and how their lives were permanently altered afterwards. ❥ The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell (includes Aegean and Ionian islands). Indispensable for travel to any Greek island.” —LLTD
Italy
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Venice). ❥ A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (Florence). ❥ In Sicily by Norman Lewis.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“Naples 44 by Norman Lewis.” —Catherine Fairweather
“Jan Morris’ Veniceand Mary McCarthy’s Venice Observed are an incredible combination. But also how great is fiction for a sense of place? Half the joy of spy novels is imagining that we can travel with the same facility of their protagonists. I’ll chase down whatever detective novels are set where I am planning to travel, too. Because I think a big part of the fun of traveling is planning for it—outfitting and things. But also building the little narrative into which you wanna go, the mood, the tone.” —Chris Wallace
Jan Morris, Venice—Sophy Roberts
“Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. Worth reading and rereading. ❥ Room With a View by E. M. Forster (Florence). Witty and wonderful novel with such great and memorable characters. ❥ The Stones of Florence by Mary McCarthy (Florence). Avoid the small paperback edition and track down the larger book with superb photos by Evelyn Hofer. ❥ The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley by Elizabeth Romer. Before Under the Tuscan Sun, there was this beautifully written and more authentic memoir, with recipes. ❥ War in Val D’Orcia by Iris Origo (Tuscany). A moving memoir of life on the estate of La Foce (near Pienza) during World War II. ❥ Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby. A memoir highlighting the truly extraordinary generosity of the contadini who helped Newby (a World War II British POW) survive. ❥ The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals by Luigi Barzini. Still the best overall book. ❥ Venice for Pleasure by J. G. Links. Hands down the best guidebook-that’s-not-a-guidebook, with five walking itineraries filled with the most fascinating details. ❥ Venice & the East by Deborah Howard. An immensely interesting and rewarding read on the effect of Islam on Venice, with loads of color and black-and-white photos and reproductions. ❥ Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay by Benjamin Taylor. A thoughtful excursion through a complex and contradictory city. ❥ In Sicily by Norman Lewis. A personal history of this island that Lewis was fascinated with for sixty years. ❥ On Persephone’s Island: A Sicilian Journal by Mary Taylor Simeti. A chronicle of a calendar year on the island, organized by season, that really speaks to spirit of place. ❥ The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Sicily). The essential read, though get the 2007 edition published on the occasion of the novel’s 50th anniversary. ❥ Greene on Capri by Shirley Hazzard. ❥ The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe. And the house is still worth visiting.” —LLTD
“I’ll chase down whatever detective novels are set where I am planning to travel. Because I think a big part of the fun of traveling is planning for it—outfitting and things. But also building the little narrative into which you wanna go, the mood, the tone.” —Chris Wallace
Poland
“Warsaw Tales is a newly published collection of short stories by prominent Polish writers (including Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk) from 1911 to the present, translated by Antionia Lloyd-Jones. The stories present a highly personal and emotional portrait of the complexly endearing city of Warsaw.” —Josh Hickey
Portugal
“The First Global Village: How Portugal Changed the World by Martin Page. Utterly fascinating and eye-opening look at how a nation about half the size of Florida has been so influential. ❥
“My Lisbon: A Cookbook From Portugal’s City of Light by Nuno Mendes. Yes, a cookbook by a Michelin-starred chef but with really substantive essays on cafe culture, tascas, beach life, etc. and lots of personal recommendations. ❥ The Last Old Place: A Search Through Portugal by Datus Proper. Beautifully written memoir/travelogue in which each chapter opens with a canto from The Lusiads by Luís Camões.” —LLTD
Romania
“William Blacker’s Along the Enchanted Way is a lovely and very personal view of Transylvania and the beginning of the end of a farming culture in Eastern Europe. Not a c+l destination, but a place that I visited during the wildflower season and one that I will go back to in a heartbeat.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
Spain
“As I Walked out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee Spain – post Second World War.” —Catherine Fairweather
“Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections by James Michener. Though published almost 60 years ago, this is still the quintessential book on Spain. ❥ For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (mountains outside of Madrid). Maybe Hemingway’s best novel, which takes place during the Spanish Civil War. ❥ Madrid for Pleasure: Seven Walks Through the City’s History and Andalucía, both by Michael Jacobs, both without peer. ❥ Barcelona by Robert Hughes. Brilliant and unmatched.” —LLTD
“The White Goddess, An Encounter, Simon Gough .. Set in the artistic enclave of Deia, Mallorca, in the 1960s and written by Robert Graves’ very bohemian grand-nephew, it’s a ‘subjective’ memoir with a deeply intoxicating cast of characters.” —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
Bosnia/Croatia/Herzegovina/Montenegro/Serbia (the former Yugoslavia)
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West. —LLTD
UNITED KINGDOM
England
“The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall. Entertaining yet serious memoir and travel advisory of sorts by an American (who married a British journalist), about all the differences between Brits and Americans. ❥ Brick Lane by Monica Ali. An appealing novel about a Bangladeshi woman who is in an arranged marriage with an older (somewhat dull) older man, moves to London. The book’s title is not random, as the major street in London’s East End is named Brick Lane, where there has been a large Bengali community. ❥ Spitalfields Life by The Gentle Author. A variety of stories about many of the real-life, fascinating people who live in London’s East End. Brilliant.” —LLTD
Roberts Macfarlane, The Old Ways, Dorset —Sophy Roberts
Scotland
“An important memoir about place (addiction and redemption through nature) set in the Orkneys by Amy Liptrot called The Outrun—just out also as a film, starring brilliant Saoirose Ronan… This is the book that makes me want to go to Orkney.” —Catherine Fairweather
Nan Shepherd’s classic, The Living Mountain. —Tyler Dillon
Ireland
“Seamus Heaney’s The Death of a Naturalist. A collection of poetry that is soaked in place.” —Tyler Dillon
MULTIPLE
“Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, Dervla Murphy (Eastern Europe to India) After the death of her home-bound mother whom she spent decades tirelessly caring for, 31 year-old Dervla hopped on a bicycle one wintry Irish afternoon in 1963 and kept going until she reached India six months later.” —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
And I’d Do It Again, Aimee Crocker—Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
Any lesser-known/obscure travel books you believe deserve more recognition?
“I feel there are certain more obscure books by famous travel writers that deserve more attention. I don’t love Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia or Songlinesas much as I love his collected essays, What Am I Doing Here? I feel Huxley is a forgettable novelist, but an unforgettable traveler. Naipaul introduced me to his Jesting Pilate, a 1920s account of travelling in Asia, which has some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read. I love Jan Morris’ histories (such as Manhattan ’45 and the Pax Britannica trilogy), as well as the books on Venice and Trieste, but, as with Chatwin, the true dark horse is Destinations, a collection profiling cities that she did for Rolling Stone in the 1970s.” —Aatish Taseer
“It’s been a while since I read it, but the memoir Maiden Voyageby Tania Aebi really captivated me. Her father gave her the choice between going to college or sailing alone around the world, and she chose the boat. I was also pretty gobsmacked by the recently republished A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter, an account of a year she spent in an isolated cabin in Svalbard with her husband and another hunter in the early 1930s. For having such a stark setting (honestly, it’s a miracle they even survive), the book is unexpectedly thrilling, as Christiane thrives under the harshest of circumstances.” —Maggie Shipstead
“An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliyâ Çelebi, is the detailed chronicle of Evliyâ Çelebi’s 40-year odyssey through the Ottoman empire and beyond in the mid-late 1600s. Totally captivating, fascinating and at times superbly gory, it is a surprisingly fun read.” —Josh Hickey
Into the Heart of Borneo & In Trouble Again by Redmond O’Hanlon. —Jamshyd Sethna
“Very little known, though championed in its time by Edith Sitwell, EM Forster and Kenneth Clark, is Maiden Voyage by the writer and painter Denton Welch, about a return journey to China where he was born, published in the 1940s. Critic Robert Phillips believed it was a novel, writing of the way Welch selected and ordered details of his journey so that they “lose personal meaning and begin to become universal human materials, elements of works of art”. But Phillips was being pedantic. The best travel literature deals with the universal. That is the point. They are works of art too.” —Stanley Stewart
Anna Badkhan, Bright Unbearable Reality. ❥ Emmanuel Iduma, A Stranger’s Pose. ❥ Jeff Young, Wild Twin. ❥ Nona Fernandez, Voyager. —Sophy Roberts
“Roger Deakin’s book Waterlog. This is a book inspired by John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer,” a story about a man who swims home from a summer party through all the back garden pools in the neighborhood, one by one, sneaking through fences, submerging over and over until he reaches home. Deakin wanted to swim wild waterways in England, from one side to the other, and in doing so was discovering new things about both himself and his place. I feel like the same thing that drew Deakin to Cheever’s story, and the thing that drew me to Deakin, was the elemental essential quality of water and the wild, and a changing perspective of what Deakin calls a “frog’s-eye-view” of the world. Being submerged changes perspective, it changes the way animals react to you, and Deakin communicates this so very well it is electric.” —Tyler Dillon
The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts. —Will Bolsover
“An Armenian Sketchbook by Vassily Grossman, of the much better known masterpiece Life & Fate—a charming amble through a strange ‘country’ made more poignant as it coincides with the author’s cancer and sense of life contracting, and by the fact that his lifetime oeuvre has been rejected by the Soviet censors.” —Catherine Fairweather
“A Woman in the Polar Night by Christine Ritter is an exploration of solitude and freedom and how nature affects the human psyche, in this incredible memoir of a woman who lives off-grid for a year in a hut in the remote Arctic Circle in the ‘30s.” —Catherine Fairweather
“The best travel literature deals with the universal. That is the point. They are works of art, too.” —Stanley Stewart
“Eland Books is the most brilliant independent publisher, so I would recommend many from its list of (mainly) dead authors. They publish the likes of Martha Gellhorn and Norman Lewis and Dervla Murphy, but also obscure titles such as Begums, Thugs and White Mughals by Fanny Parkes, which shows the colonial wife in a very colourful light.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts. . —LLTD
Which classic travel book remains relevant or essential today?
“Homer’s Odyssey is the ultimate and eternal travel book and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is runner up.” —Josh Hickey
Ryzsard Kaupuckinski, Travels with Herodotus.—Sophy Roberts
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron —Jamshyd Sethna
“All of them, even the bad ones; they all mark some sort of point of view that is worth noting, either as examples of mistakes or hubris, even bad writing, or as the joy of humans wanting to share with others what they have seen and felt with all their foibles.” —Tyler Dillon
“Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, written more than half a century ago, addresses the issues of climate change and the environment and our disappearing natural world and our place in it, issues that are even more relevant today.” —Catherine Fairweather
“Arctic Dreamsby Barry Lopez is the most awe-inspiringly precise and beautiful work of nature writing.” —Maggie Shipstead
“Definitely Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Many people hate that book (including Richard Holbrooke), because of the sympathy it extends to the Serbs, but this is the thing with travel writing: it can be true, without being right. So long as a writer is completely present and able to look at her own subjectivity, I don’t really care where she comes down. What I look for is the integrity of the artist, not the political scientist, and West has so much heart, such crazy ambition, that really I’m willing to go anywhere with her.” —Aatish Taseer
“A Fortune-Teller Told Me, by Tiziano Terzani – This is one book that extols the virtue of the journey—the destination is secondary, and how we travel these days, for very different reasons, needs to change. The journey, by land and sea, celebrates the journey, the geography, the culture, and its shape-shifting as the writer for a year on a fortune-teller’s advice takes air travel off the itinerary.” —William Gilchrist
“Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle (1965), by Dervla Murphy, is probably the best in the ‘classic’ genre of travelogues. It was on the syllabus at my all-girls’ boarding school; what sticks in my mind is her travels through Afghanistan as a hardcore solo female traveler… A smart, even pointed, assignment.” —Kaitlin Phillips
“Arctic Dreamsby Barry Lopez is the most awe-inspiringly precise and beautiful work of nature writing.” —Maggie Shipstead
“Probably not a travel book, but the 1948 book, Cry, The Beloved Country was cruelly relevant almost 60 years later when David Rattray, the great historian and champion of the Zulu people, was tragically murdered in South Africa in 2007. Two murders decades apart—one fictional and one actual—where South Africa’s racial tragedy played out in the worst possible way.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
Long Walk to Freedom – Mandela —Will Bolsover
Two books: A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor and The Journey’s Echo by Freya Stark . —LLTD
Any books that feel very dated or un-PC that are still worth a read?
“Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. As a child I can’t tell you the adventures I had thanks to this book.” —William Gilchrist
“Often the best exploration and adventure stories conceal a dark reality of exploitation and colonialism. The Journals of Lewis and Clark come to mind.” —Josh Hickey
Martha Gelhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another—Catherine Fairweather
Freya Stark—Sophy Roberts
“The Gentle Art of Tramping. I seem to buy this book over and over and hand it out (this and David Byrne’s How Music Works). It is dated, yes (published in 1926), but it is endlessly entertaining and erudite. The chapters are laid out as an instruction manual to learn how to take things slow, how to appreciate a good pair of walking boots, the art of idleness, why a notebook or scrapbook is a good thing in and of itself, and why the road to Khiva sometimes isn’t as good as the road outside your front door. Graham spent years traveling the world and came home to realize he had learned how to appreciate his own home through travel. It gives you wanderlust for your backyard, which I find compelling, when jumping on a plane might not always be the best option. All the skills a good traveller needs to hone in order to learn how to enjoy the space between.” —Tyler Dillon
“Again, I feel only fraudulent books have age on them. Alberuni is great, Ibn Battuta bad. Mungo Park and John Speke are still riveting, but William Dalrymple, though far more recent, has aged terribly. Naipaul is about as “politically incorrect” as they come, but there is no age at all on the books. Prejudice is interesting so long as the writer is able to see around it. What we have most to fear is the glib, easy traveler who is so full of his own cultural centrality that the place and people he finds himself among are mere background. I recently re-read Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, which I had read as a child, and was astonished at how well it holds up. I think Suzy Hansen’s book on Turkey says more about America than Turkey, but its integrity is unquestionable. What I look for are signs of discomfort. A serious traveler lives by his or her nerves. She stews over her material. If that tension of someone thinking hard about themselves, and the people they find themselves amongst, is not there, then I’m out.” —Aatish Taseer
“From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel by Rudyard Kipling – A 22-year-old Kipling was young, snarky, coming to things from a privileged and colonialist point of view, no matter how much he worked against it, but still something in this collection of letters and essays shines through, humor I think, some sort of punk rock humor of travel. “Then came by the person that I most hate—a Globe-trotter. He, sitting in my chair, discussed India with the unbridled arrogance of five weeks on a Cook’s ticket. He was from England and had dropped his manners in the Suez Canal.” The letters track Kipling’s slow journey home from India the long way around, via boat across the Pacific and train across the USA, then boat again to get to England. Along the way he meets Mark Twain, and hunts him down to chat. It is a treasure trove of observations and insight. This book is out of print, but you can print it on demand from a few sites, or dig up an old dog-eared copy used, it is well worth the find.” —Tyler Dillon
“Staying On by Paul Scott is the most lovely sketch of a couple hanging on in India after the Empire was well and truly over. So, wonderfully dated. The 1980 film of the book starred Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, who had been in ‘A Brief Encounter’ together in 1945.” —Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell
“Graham spent years traveling the world and came home to realize he had learned how to appreciate his own home through travel. It gives you wanderlust for your backyard, which I find compelling, when jumping on a plane might not always be the best option.” —Tyler Dillon
“I’m not sure about the terribly dated, though most obviously politically incorrect – but Far and Away: The Essential A. A. Gill qualifies as a great read. Another one is What Am I Doing Here, by Bruce Chatwin.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“When everyone persists in the same opinion, I turn away from it; the truth is surely elsewhere.” Leo the African by Amin Maalouf is the retelling of the travelogues of Hasan al-Wazzan. From Granada, witnessing regime change, rebellion, renaissance and passion, ending in Rome—an amazing journey witnessing Europe and Northern Africa in splendour and turmoil, truly a tome that tells us to live a little or a lot.” —William Gilchrist
“Something of Value by Robert Ruark (Kenya). This novel is mostly about the Mau Mau rebellion (1952-1960) and some of the dialogue may sound offensive; but Ruark, a journalist, accurately portrayed the times, and he opens the book with a proverb that perfectly illustrates his tale: “If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them.” —Barrie Kerper
“A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, shortlisted for the Booker in 1979, has been criticized for his views on European colonialism in Africa. To me, it evoked a sense of place that has haunted me since.” —Lisa Lindblad
Are there books not traditionally considered travel narratives that so completely capture a world, you would recommend them for armchair travel?
“I often prefer literature/memoir over travel narrative, because it gets under my skin in a deeper, different kind of way—especially Italian writers. Beyond Elena Ferrante’s Neopolian novels (I mean, can you even go to Naples without reading My Brilliant Friend, named the best book of the CENTURY by The New York Times?), there are too many world-capturing, soul-expanding books to list. Here’s a start: The House on via Gemito by Domenico Starnone (also Naples); Arturo’s Island (Procida) and Lies and Sorcery (Sicily) by Elsa Morante; Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (Matera); The Eight Mountainsby Paolo Cognetti (Milan, Aosta Valley); ANYTHING by Natalia Ginsburg, but her memoir Family Lexicon (Dolomites, Turin) is my favorite. The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, edited by Jhumpa Lahiri, sits on my bedside table, so a literary escape—even just a few pages at a time—is never farther than arm’s reach.” —Meghan McEwan
“The poetry of CP Cavafy, a Greek Alexandrine, has always seemed a kind of travel literature, wandering happily across both space and time. “Ithaca,” his most famous poem, is a traveller’s poem, reminding us not to focus too much on destinations. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey/ Without her you wouldn’t have set out./ She has nothing left to give you now.” —Stanley Stewart
“I often prefer literature/memoir over travel narrative, because it gets under my skin in a deeper, different kind of way” —Meghan McEwan
“Nina Simone’s Gum – In July of 1999, Warren Ellis and Nick Cave were working at the Meltdown Festival in London England, an annual event celebrating music and art. Dr. Nina Simone was to perform, and both Ellis and Cave were keen on the show. Ellis had played with Cave since 1993 as the band “The Bad Seeds,” and was also in the successful band “the Dirty Three.” They both watched as Dr Simone walked onto the stage, aggressive with fists tight, looked out to the audience wrapped in expectation, and thrust one hand and fist up into the air and sounded her yawp over the heads of the crowd. The way they describe the transition the room had that evening is like rapture, a transformation. Simone walked to the piano and took out her chewing gum, smashed it onto the side panel of the piano, and launched. And with her launched the crowd into a musical and religious ecstasy. Ellis, so taken with this experience, and a collector of mojo trinkets which I can relate to, knew he had to collect something from this room, some relic, so he crawled onto the stage after the show and stole the gum from the Piano. He stole it, and he cherished it, and held it in a sacred place for 20 years. It was a source of energy for him, he says, and it had some power he did not understand. There is a scene in the Nick Cave film, 20,000 Days on Earth, where Ellis and Cave are talking about this concert and Ellis admits to his friend that he kept Dr. Nina Simone’s gum. This scene spoke to so many, and he and Cave were asked about it so often, Faber and Faber, the publishing house, approached Ellis and asked him to write a book about it. This inspired a museum touring show of artifacts and relics collected by both Cave and Ellis, which included the actual gum under glass on a marble post. The Book, Nina Simone’s Gum, speaks of the same magic as the things I impulsively collect in my travels. It is related to travel, there is something in holding artifacts that is the same motion as collecting experiences when we travel, totems of things learned.” —Tyler Dillon
“Real World Records – Music, like the sea, unites us all. For me Peter Gabriel’s record label was like an audio atlas to me, amazing journeys await, you just have to listen.” —William Gilchrist
“This is silly, but I always say—to anyone going somewhere to bake in the sun—to take Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer. It’s set in a fictional part of Central America. Expatriates drinking themselves silly, missing the signals, staying when they should be leaving. (I always think of Didion when I think of Hawaii; she really loved the hotels there. So that’s something, I suppose.)” —Kaitlin Phillips
“There is a technique in writing that can capture human emotions and sense of place far better than any other form, poetry. It has a reputation of being out of touch, or cheesy, or abstract, but I think it is misunderstood, and its power is miscalculated. A poem about a place can put you in that mental state of being, just like a choose your own adventure book can, but it is dealing with the emotive state of place rather than the physical. When I want to know how a place feels prior to going there, or if I want to draw on some deep memory of place, a poem can bring it back in sparks and wisps. Robert Frost can place me on a wintery path at night, Mary Oliver can deliver me to a wetland in spring, Jack Kerouac can instantly land me in a bar in San Fransisco in 1956.” —Tyler Dillon
“I always say—to anyone going somewhere to bake in the sun—to take Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer. It’s set in a fictional part of Central America. Expatriates drinking themselves silly, missing the signals, staying when they should be leaving. ” —Kaitlin Phillips
Best audiobook or podcast you’ve listened to in the travel genre?
“Clare Danes reads the recent, and acclaimed, translation of Homer’s Odyssey by Emily Wilson.” —Josh Hickey
“Volume 2 of Hunter S. Thompson’s letters are a wild and profane ride around America. The audiobook, read by the incomparable Malcolm Hilgarten, is one of the great listening experiences you can have. Just don’t get so caught up in the proceedings that you start having tequila before breakfast.” —David Coggins
“I love Jeremy Basetti’s “Travel Writing a World,” and Charlie Pignal’s wonderful podcast, which covers travel, but much else besides.” —Aatish Taseer
“‘Gone to Timbuktu’ with Sophy Roberts and ‘Passport to Everywhere’ with Melissa Biggs Bradley are two travel-related podcasts by savvy ladies who know what they’re talking about that I have listened to and highly recommend.” —Jamshyd Sethna
“Gone to Timbuktu, the short-lived podcast series by brilliant travel journalist Sophy Roberts. She may have moved on, but I haven’t. Occasionally, I’ll go back and pull one up for inspiration. She’s such a thoughtful, curious and insightful interviewer, and many of her guests are travel writers themselves (including Gail Simmons on the ancient pilgrimages/long-distance footpath from her book Between the Chalk and the Sea).” —Meghan McEwan
Rick Steves —Sophy Roberts
“I’m addicted to the following travel history podcasts: Fall of Civilizations, Gone to Timbuktu, The Historiansplaining. —Lisa Borgnes Giramonte
“I don’t listen to audiobooks and prefer to read hard copies, but the most interesting podcast for me is probably not necessarily a ‘travel podcast’ but more based around life and how to ‘hold oneself’ which is very relevant when travelling, so maybe the Rich Roll Podcast. Or maybe my own podcast, ‘The Naked Eye Studios’! ;)” —Will Bolsover
“To this day, the best travel documents, other than books, are all the TV episodes of Anthony Bourdain. To me, he is the quintessential traveler.” —Lisa Lindblad
EXTRA CREDIT!
I ran with this idea, a list of books to read based on the feel of the book or writer matched with the feel of a place. As opposed to the book lists of things written about a place: things to read based on matching poetry and prose with landscape and feel. —Tyler Dillon
Bhutan – John Mcphee Essays, Tabla Rasa: it moves and shifts with sharp turns in short distances much like the peaks and valleys. Mongolia – Faulkner, Go Down, Moses – it is how big sky country feels. Uzbekistan – Tennesse Williams Suddenly last summer. The hot madness of it all. Vietnam – Tom Robbins and Anthony Bourdain. Scotland – Agatha Christie. Peru – Rebecca Solnit Wanderlust. A missive on walking…Peru is perfect for this. Berlin – The poetry of Eileen Miles. Punchy and punk rock like the city itself. Mexico City:Slouching towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion. I can’t put my finger on why but something about the way California is talked about in the 60’s is captured in Mexico City these days. Perhaps it is art and climate. Uruguay is for the landscapes of the poetry of Mary Oliver. France – All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. Rolling hills of Yorkshire match the feel of agrarian French countrysides, there is something connecting the two. Greece – Italo Calvino Invisible cities, islands of ideas of place bouncing around in a magically surreal dance.
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