One of the best ways to make a journey enjoyable and
rewarding is to read up about the culture and history of your destination. Anyone
can buy a guidebook, but the books listed below will add depth and quality to your
travels. They are sorted by world regions.
You might also browse through Anderson's Travel Companion, a guide to the travel
literature of the world. It was written by Sara Anderson, founder of the Travel
Bookshop in London, who has chosen the selection below.
NORTH AFRICA
|
Travels in Asia and Africa
1325-1354
Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier and as a good Muslim made a pilgrimage
to Mecca.
|
Letter from Egypt
Lucie Duff-Gordon
The author spent seven years in a ruined house in Luxor in the 1860s.
|
The Pyramids of Egypt
I.E.S.Edwards
One of the classic books on Egyptian archaeology.
|
Hideous Kinky
Esther Freud
Esther Freud was taken by her hippy mother to Morocco during the 1960s,
aged five.
|
Morocco That Was
Walter Harris
Harris arrived in Tangier in 1886 and became the Times
correspondent
there until 1933.
|
Cairo Trilogy
Naguib Mahfouz
(Palace Walk
, Palace of Desire
and Sugar Sweet
)
One of the most widely read authors and winner of the Nobel prize in 1988.
|
A Year in Marrakesh
Peter Mayne
Mayne lived in a small house in Marrakesh and wrote this book (originally published
as The Alleys of Marrakesh
) from his observations.
|
A Cure for Serpents
Duke of Pirajno
Pirajno arrived in North Africa as a doctor and stayed 18 years. His
collection of reminiscences and stories makes wonderful reading.
|
In the Pharoah's
Shadow
Anthony Sattin
A look at the ancient customs which survive in today's Egypt.
|
Old Serpent Nile
Stanley Stewart
A journey from the Nile Delta to the Mountains of the Moon.
|
WEST
AFRICA
|
The Innocent Anthropologist
Nigel Barley
The hilarious account of Barley's first field trip to the Dowayo in the
Cameroons.
|
A Good Man in Africa
William Boyd
A very funny novel set in Ghana and Nigeria.
|
The Viceroy of Ouidah
Bruce Chatwin
A poor Brazilian sailed to Dahomey (now Benin) in the early 1800s,
determined to make his fortune and return triumphantly to Brazil.
|
Difficult and Dangerous
Roads
Hugh Clapperton
Clapperton was one of the first British explorers to enter the central Sahara - this is
the account of his travels in the Sahara and Fezzan in 1822-1825.
|
The Overloaded Ark
Gerald Durrell
Durrell's first book is about an expedition to the Cameroons to
collect
animals for his zoo.
|
Journey Without Maps
Graham Greene
This journey across Liberia with his cousin Barbara was Greene's
first book.
|
Mali Blues
Lieve Joris
Four different tales of travelling through Senegal, Mauritania and Mali.
|
The Famished Road
Ben Okri
A lyrical and compelling book, full of flights of fancy, but also instructive about life in a
village.
|
EAST
AFRICA
|
Out of Africa
Karen Blixen
In 1914 Karen Blixen went to Kenya to run a coffee farm which failed.
The friends and animals that she met are vividly portrayed, and we share
her sense of loss both for the farm and, in a wider sense, for an era.
|
White Mischief
James Fox
The 'Happy Valley' clique in Kenya was thrown
into confusion when Lord
Erroll, founder of the set, was murdered in 1941.
|
I Dreamed of Africa
Kuki Gallmann
A haunting memoir capturing the magic, beauty and pain of Kenya.
|
The Weather in Africa
Martha Gellhorn
Three novellas set in East Africa: On the Mountain
, By the Sea
and In the Highlands.
|
Warriors
Gerald Hanley
Gerald Hanley spent several years in Somalia, where he got to know the
local people very well.
|
The Flame Trees of Thika
Elspeth Huxley
Elspeth Huxley went with her parents to Thika to become pioneering
settlers among the Kikuyu.
|
North of South
Shiva Naipaul
A brilliant travel narrative about journeying through Kenya, Tanzania
and Zambia. Naipaul was extremely observant with a novelist's eye
for detail.
|
Scoop
Evelyn Waugh
Journalist William Boot is sent mistakenly to Ishmaelia by press baron Lord Copper,
to cover a war. As Boot blunders along, this becomes an hilarious satire on Fleet
Street and war reporting.
|
CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN
AFRICA
|
My Gorilla Journey
Helen Attwater
The author and her husband set up an orphanage for baby gorillas in the Congo.
|
The Rainbird
Jan Brokken
Travelling through the jungles of Gabon, Brokken is haunted by the hosts of his
predecessors.
|
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Conrad went to the Belgian Congo in 1890 to captain a river steamer, and it became
the setting for this compelling novel.
|
My Traitor's Heart
Rian Malan
An extraordinarily powerful book about the reality of being brought up
in South Africa.
|
Long Walk to Freedom
Nelson Mandela
Mandela's riveting memoirs recreate the experiences that helped
shape his destiny.
|
The Ukimwi Road
Dervla
Murphy
'Ukimwi' of the
title is AIDS. Dervla Murphy made a 3,000-mile
bicycle journey from Kenya through Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia
to Zimbabwe.
|
A Bend in the River
VS Naipaul
Salim travels to the town on a bend in the river and this is the story of his life as a
trader in that town, a place which comes vividly alive
in Naipaul's prose.
|
Congo Journey
Redmond O'Hanlon
A gut-wrenching adventure that is also filled with scholarly observations on natural
history.
|
Cry the Beloved Country
Alan Paton
Even today this book remains one of the classics written about racial tension in South
Africa.
|
AFRICAN ISLANDS
|
Paradise
Abdulrazek Gurnah
Set around Zanzibar in the early years of European involvement. Yusuf, a Muslim
boy, is taken into the service of his merchant uncle and, through his eyes, we see
the Europeans as colonisers.
|
Muddling Through in
Madagascar
Dervla Murphy
Dervla Murphy travelled through Madagascar with her 14-year-old
daughter Rachel.
|
Lemurs of the Lost World
Jane Wilson
An exploration of the forests and crocodile caves of Madagascar.
|
NORTH
AMERICA
|
The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
The trilogy consists of City of Glass
, Ghosts
and The Locked Room
and has been described as "A shatteringly clever piece of
work'.
|
America Day by Day
Simone de Beauvoir
A fascinating record of de Beauvoir's first
impressions of the US.
|
Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil
John Berendt
Written as a novel, but based on the true eccentrics of Savannah, Georgia.
|
A Lady's Life in the Rockie
Mountains
Isabella Bird
In 1873 Isabella Bird rode through the Wild West, meeting her 'dear
(one-eyed) desperado', Rocky Mountain Jim, whom she
described as 'a man any woman might love, but no sane woman
would marry'.
|
The Penguin History of the United States of
America
Hugh Brogan
A complete general history of the States, starting from British colonisation and ending
at the fall of Nixon.
|
New York Days, New York Nights
Stephen Brook
Amusing and energetic
observations of New York.
|
Bury My Heart at Wounded
Knee
Dee Brown
The epic bestseller which tells the Indians' side of the Wild West
story through
the voices of such as Sitting Bull, Cochise, Crazy Horse and Geronimo.
|
The Lost Continent
Bill Bryson
Born in Des Moines, Bryson left as soon as he could, but after ten years
in England he was lured back and drove around small-town America
producing an hilarious acount of his travels.
|
Notes from a Big Country
Bill Bryson
Having lived in the UK for many years, Bryson at last returns to America with his
family.
|
Almost Heaven
Martin Fletcher
An original look at the weird and wonderful things of small-town America.
|
Cold Mountain
Charles Frazer
A soldier wounded in the Civil War leaves for the long journey home to Ada, the the
woman he had loved.
|
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
The classic book about Fifties underground America which has become the epitome
of the Beat generation.
|
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
Chris McCandless disappeared in Alaska having reinvented himself andgiven all his
possessions to charity. Why?
|
The Oatmeal Ark
Rory Maclean
The author traces his great-grandfather's voyage from Shetland to
Nova Scotia and across Canada.
|
River Horse
William Least-Heat Moon
Moon's bid to cross America by its interior waterways rivals his
previous book Blue Highways.
|
A Turn in the South
VS Naipaul
Naipaul aims to come to terms with themany complexities of the South, with all its
paradoxes and contradictions.
|
Penguin Book of American Short
Stories
Includes gems by
,
,
,
,
and many others.
|
The Shipping News
E Annie Proulx
Pulitzer Prize-winning book about fishing and newspaper life in Newfoundland.
|
Old Glory
Jonathan Raban
Inspired by memories of reading Huckleberry Finn
as a child, Jonathan Raban takes a boat up the Mississippi.
|
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
Nostalgic and humourous mixture of journalism and autobiography, written in the
heyday of steamboating on the Mississippi. Twain's love of the
river shines through his prose.
|
CENTRAL AND SOUTH
AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN
|
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
A family saga spanning four generations in Chile. Full of unforgettable characters,
spirits, history and forces of nature.
|
A Visit to Don Otavio
Sybille Bedford
Sybille Bedford describes the horrors of her train journey to Mexico in
graphic detail.
|
Collected Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of subtly ingenious stories.
|
In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin
Chatwin never forgot the piece of skin with strands of hair from a Patagonian
brontosaurus, which he found in his grandmother's cabinet; it
was this that eventually inspired him to
go to Patagonia.
|
Breaking the Maya Code
Michael D Coe
It is only in the last 20 years that the code to Mayan hieroglyphs hasbeen discovered.
This is a fascinating account of how it was done.
|
One River
Wade Davis
Science adventure and hallucinations in the Amazon basin.
|
The Spears of Twilight
Philippe Descola
Life and death in the Amazon jungle: modern anthropology at its best.
|
Havana Dreams
Wendy Gimbel
Four generations of Cuban women - one of whom is the illegitimate daughter of Fidel
Castro.
|
The Lawless Roads
Graham Greene
Greene was commissioned to go to Mexico in 1938 to find out how people had
reacted to the religious persecution and anti-
clerical purges of the then President Calles. His trip formed the basis for
The Powr and the Glory
.
|
The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene
The 'whisky' priest of Greene's
novel had done everything wrong in the eyes of the Church: taken a
'wife', fathered a daughter, had an addiction to
brandy -and yet obstinately remained a priest.
|
Amazon Frontier
John Hemming
A definitive account, full of original research covering the period from the mid-
eighteenth to the early twentieth century.
|
Personal Narrative of a Journey to the
Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent
Alexander von Humboldt
>From his youth, von Humboldt had been devoted to the study of nature and
'experienced in my travels, enjoyments which have amply
compensated for the privations inseparable from a laborious and often agitated
life.'
|
The Time of the
Hero
Mario Vargas Llosa
Set in the Military Academy in Lima, this novel so outraged the Peruvian
authorities that copies were publicly burned.
|
Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry
Set in Cuernavaca, where the alcoholic British consul has a breakdown and dies, this
has now become a cult
book (although when first published it sold only two copies in two years in Canada).
|
A House for Mr Biswas
VS Naipaul
Naipaul considers this book to be the one 'that is closest to
me' and the one that contains some of his funniest writing.
|
The Fruit Palace
Charles Nicholl
Charles Nicholl first came into contact with the Colombian drug trade in
the early Seventies. Twelve years later he went back to find out about this dangerous
world.
|
The Labyrinth of Solitude
Octavio Paz
A collection of essays analysing Mexico's history and psyche and
looking at relations with the USA.
|
Penguin History of Latin America
ed. Edwin Williamson
Starts with the pre-Columbian Indians and continues through savage colonisations.
|
Rites
Victor Perera
An autobiography of life in Guatemala City's Jewish community.
Perera's
father was a first-generation immigrant who worked his way up from being an itinerant
pedlar to a leading merchant.
|
The Final Passage
Caryl Phillips
The story of 19-year-old Leila's struggle to come to terms with life
on a small Caribbean island in the 1950s.
|
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys
This novel set in Dominica and Jamaica describes the lives of Edward Rochester and
his mad wife before their introduction as characters into Charlotte
Bronte's Jane Eyre.
|
The Vision of Elena Silves
Nicholas Shakespeare
Shakespeare's combination of magical realism with European
traditions of
fiction make an extremely effectivemixture.
|
Touching the Void
Joe Simpson
A compulsivly readable book about a climbing accident in the Andes.
|
The Land of Miracles
Stephen Smith
Smith writes with ironic detachement about this country of paradox.
|
The Weather Prophet
Lucretia Stewart
A personal account of a single woman's foray into the wider
reaches of the Antilles.
|
The Mosquito Coast
Paul Theroux
Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle and struggles to keep them
alive with his inventions.
|
The Old Patagonian
Express
Paul Theroux
Theroux's journey from Boston to Patagonia by train was full of
contrast: some were ramshackle and old, others superb and new.
|
Ninety-Two Days
Evelyn Waugh
Often throughout this book, Waugh philosophises about travel:
"The delight
of travel...is a delight just as incommunicable as the love of
home.'
|
Travels in a Thin
Country
Sara Wheeler
Sara Wheeler
spent six months on her own travelling through Chile.
|
Time Among the Maya
Ronald Wright
An attempt to discover the ancient roots of the Maya civilization.
|
MIDDLE
EAST
|
Wilder Shores of Love
Lesley Blanch
Biographies of four redoubtable nineteenth-century women travellers: Isabel Burton,
Jane Digby, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery and Isabelle Eberhardt.
|
The Road to Oxiana
Robert Byron
One of the classic travel books about Persia and Afghanistan. Robert
Byron made this journey in 1933-4 and vividly describes the people he
met and scenes he saw.
|
From the Holy Mountain
William Dalrymple
Dalrymple followed in the footsteps of the sixth-century Byzantine monk
John Moschos on what has already become a classic journey.
|
The Hittites
OR Gurney
The Hittites created an advanced civilisation in Biblical times; they were politically well
organised and their literature was inscribed on clay tablets in cuneiform writing.
|
The Gates of Damascus
Lieve Joris
An intimate portrait of contemporary Arab society.
|
Politics in the Middle East
Elie Kedourie
An historical analysis which attempts to explain why ideological politics, such as
nationalism and fundamentalism, have triumphed in the Middle East and why
democratic governments have not worked in Islamic countries.
|
Eothen
Alexander Kinglake
One of the classic travel books, written by the young Kinglake in 1844. The account
of his travels to the East is interesting as much for the descriptions of what he saw
as for the effect these places had upon him.
|
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
TE Lawrence
This book has been criticised for its historical
inaccuracy, as it is a very personal account of the Arab Revolt, but
Lawrence's lively prose ensures that it will remain a classic.
|
Yemen
Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Mackintosh-Smith lived in the Yemen for 15 years and wrote this quirky, learned and
poetic book.
|
The Arabs
Peter Mansfield
An introduction to the modern Arab world from political and
historical aspects; the second half of the book looks at each Arab state
separately.
|
A Reed Shaken By the Wind (A Journey
through the Unexplored Marshlands of Iraq)
Gavin Maxwell
In 1956 Gavin Maxwell accompanied Wilfred Thesiger to the marshlands of Iraq. He
describes the people he met and his experiences during these
travels.
|
Among the Believers
VS Naipaul
This first part of Naipaul's Islamic journey visits Iran.
|
Arabia
Jonathan Raban
Raban was living in Earls Court in the 1970s when it began to fill up with Arabs; he
decided to go and see for himself their countries
of origin - and produced what has been called "one of the most
delightful travel books in 30 years'.
|
The Oxford History of the
Crusades
ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith
Written by a team of scholars, the book covers material from the First
Crusade in 1095 through to ideas that we have about the crusades today.
|
Arabian Sands
Wilfred Thesiger
Thesiger crossed the Empty Quarter and says of the book "For
me this
book remains a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent
people.'
|
The Life of My
Choice
Wilfred Thesiger
Thesiger's autobiography explains how he got the urge for travel
and who
it was that influenced him.
|
The Marsh Arabs
Wilfred Thesiger
A book about the fast-disappearing people who live in the marshes in
Iraq, around the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates.
|
Mirror to Damascus
Colin Thubron
The history of Damascus from Biblical times until the revolution of 1966.
|
SOUTH
ASIA
|
Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian
John Beames
Beames was in India from 1858-1893; this lively book describes his time as a district
officer of the Raj.
|
An Indian Summer
James Cameron
Cameron captures the sounds, smells and colours of India. An invaluable
introduction.
|
The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian
Nirad C Chaudhuri
Chaudhuri, a distinguished scholar, was born in East Bengal in 1897 and
did not finally settle in England until 1970.
|
The Age of Kali
William Dalrymple
A series of essays which are the distillation of ten years travelling around the
sub-continent.
|
City of Djinns
William Dalrymple
After spending 12 months in Delhi, Dalrymple learned to peel away the successive
layers of history.
|
A Passage to India
E.M. Forster
An incident at the Marabar caves between the Englishwoman Adela Quested and the
Indian Dr Aziz formsthe centre of this classic novel: is one of
Forster's masterpieces.
|
Chasing the Monsoon
Alexander Frater
In 1987 Frater followed the monsoon from Cape Comorin in Southern India
to Bangladesh.
|
Liberty or Death
Patrick French
A controversial
reinterpretation of the last years of British rule in
India.
|
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
A book to whet appetites for travel in the
sub-continent.
|
The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen
Although Matthiessen primarily went in search of the elusive snow leopard in the
remote Crystal Mountains of northern Nepal, this book is essentially a spiritual
search. Inspiring descriptions of the
scenery and wildlife.
|
Calcutta
Geoffrey Moorhouse
An illuminating book about the city past and present, rich in anecdote
and history.
|
Full Tilt
Dervla Murphy
Dervla Murphy fulfilled a childhood dream when she made a six-month
journey riding her bicycle 3,000 miles across Europe, Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and into India.
|
Bachelor of Arts
RK Narayan
One of the Malgudi novels which gets to the heart of Indian life.
|
Slowly Down the Ganges
Eric Newby
The description of a 1,200- mile journey down the Ganges which Eric Newby made
with his wife.
|
Travels in Nepal
Charlie Pye-Smith
Pye-Smith travelled throughout Nepal from Kathmandu to Namche Bazar, down the
Kali Gandaki and south to the Terai along the Indian border.
|
Sorcerer's Apprentice
Tahir Shah
The gripping story of Shah's apprenticeship into the ways of Indian
godmen.
|
Selected Poems
Rabindranath Tagore
A superb selection from a great poet.
|
No Full Stops in India
Mark Tully
Mark Tully was born in India and has worked there for the BBC for many years; his
knowledge is almost unparalled among foreigners and his sympathy and
understanding shine through all of these essays.
|
CENTRAL
ASIA
|
The Search for Shangri-La
Charles Allen
An account of four recent journeys into far western Tibet.
|
First Russia Then Tibet
Robert Byron
Byron contrasts post-revolutionary Russia with pre-industrial Tibet,
both of which he knew fairly well and both of which he describes
lucidly.
|
In Xanadu
William Dalrymple
Dalrymple travelled from Jerusalem to Xanadu and Kubla Khan's
palace,
crossing Asia by a variety of transport.
|
Bayonets to Lhasa
Peter Fleming
An account of the Younghusband expedition to Lhasa in 1903/4 which paved the way
for Anglo-Tibetan friendship.
|
News from Tartary
Peter Fleming
Fleming made this journey was to find out what was happening in Sinkiang
(Chinese Turkestan).
|
Seven Years in Tibet
Heinrich Harrer
Probably one of the best known and most widely read books about Tibet.
|
Foreign Devils on the Silk
Road
Peter Hopkirk
A highly readable account of the adventures of all the explorers who have made
archaeological raids on the Silk Road.
|
The Great Game
Peter Hopkirk
The secret agents of both Britain and Russia were involved in a great
struggle in Central Asia during the last century; this became known as
the Great Game.
|
Setting the East Ablaze
Peter Hopkirk
The story of the Bolsheviks' attempt to 'set the
east ablaze' with the doctrine of Marxism between the wars.
|
Trespassers on the Roof of the
World
Peter Hopkirk
The account of how Tibet was forcibly opened to foreigners in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
|
Into Thin Air
Jon Krakauer
A personal account of the Everest disaster of May 1996.
|
Ancient Wisdom, Modern World
HH the Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama's guide to living today using universal principles.
|
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov
Written between 1838 -40, this was the Russian poet Lermontov's
only
novel; it consists of five stories set in Russian Asia.
|
An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan
Lady Macartney
The author was a diplomat's wife in Kashgar from 1890 until 1918.
|
Eastern Approaches
Fitzroy Maclean
A tale of high adventure and politics, superbly told, set in the Caucasus, Central Asia,
Persia and Yugoslavia.
|
A Short Walk in the Hindu
Kush
Eric Newby
Eric Newby was working in the rag trade in London when he set off for
the Hindu Kush; his book has now become a travel classic.
|
From Heaven Lake
Vikram Seth
Seth hitch-hiked through Chinese Central Asia
and Tibet to Nepal. A delightful book.
|
Journey to Turkistan
Eric Teichman
In 1935 Teichman left the British Embassy in China and travelled through Mongolia
and Chinese Turkistan to Urumchi by motor truck and pony.
|
SOUTH-EAST
ASIA
|
Red Lights and Green Lizards
Liz Anderson
A doctor's account of her new job in a brothel in Phnom Penh in the
early 1990s.
|
Freedom from Fear and other
writings
Aung San Suu Kyi
A collection of pieces by the Nobel Laureate, written before her house arrest, which
reflect her beliefs, hopes and fears for her country and people.
|
Through the Jungle of
Death
Stephen Brookes
Moving account of a boy's escape from war-time Burma.
|
Three Moons in Vietnam
Maria Coffey
An exploration of the coast from the Mekong Delta in the south to Halong
Bay in the north.
|
The Beach
Alex Garland
A fast-moving adventure story in search of the perfect beach.
|
The Quiet American
Graham Greene
Set in Saigon in the Fifties, Graham Greene's novel concerns an
American on a secret mission.
|
Playing with Water
James Hamilton-Paterson
An extraordinarily moving and evocative book, which combines fishing for survival on
the remote Philippine island of Tiwarik, with a journey of inner exploration.
|
A Dragon Apparent - Cambodia, Laos and
Vietnam
Norman Lewis
Poignant reading now, as the last 40 years have seen South-East Asia wracked by
war. Lewis was writing about countries which no longer exist as they did.
|
Golden Earth
Norman Lewis
Through sheer pesistence, Lewis managed to travel all over Burma, even though
much of the countryside was under the control of insurgent armies then.
|
Under the Dragon
Rory Maclean
A trip through today's sad and beautiful Burma.
|
The Trouble with Tigers
Victor Mallet
An account of the turmoil in South-East Asia after the markets collapsed in 1997.
|
The Lost Tribe
Edward Marriott
When he hearrrd about the 'discovery' of the
Liawep tribe of Papua New
Guinea Marriott determined to record their stories, hopes and fears.
|
Into the Heart of Borneo
Redmond O'Hanlon
An extremely funny acount of a journey which O'Hanlon made with
poet James Fenton to the mountains of Batu Tiban.
|
Burmese Days
George Orwell
Set when the British were ruling in Burma. Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends
Dr Veraswami, a black enthusiast for Empire who needs help.
|
A Bright Shining Lie
Neil Sheehan
Written through the eyes of an American Colonel, John Paul Vann, this book
encapsulates everything that was most disturbing
about the Vietnam War.
|
A Fortune-Teller Told Me
Tiziano Terzani
Terzani was warned by a Hong-Kong fortune-teller not to fly for a year -
so he travelled by foot, boat, bus, car and train.
|
The Great Railway Bazaar
Paul Theroux
Theroux takes the Mandalay Express from Rangoon and then the local train to
Maymyo and Naung-Peng.
|
Islands in the Clouds
Isabella Tree
A journey to the remote parts of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya.
|
FAR
EAST
|
Tales from the South China Seas
Charles Allen
Relates the adventures of the last generation of British men and women
who went East in search of their fortunes.
|
The Mummies of Urumchi
Elizabeth Wayland Barber
3,500 year-old mummies were found in north-west China. Where did they
come from?
|
Wild Swans
Jung Chang
An extremely moving account of three generations of Chinese women, showing their
harrowing lives and
extraordinary resilience.
|
Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
A novel that totally transports you to another time and place.
|
The Korean War
Max Hastings
The Korean War which began in 1950 can today be seen as the prelude to
Vietnam.
|
The Tyranny of History
W.J.F. Jenner
Jenner argues that China has been both held together and held back by
its deference to history.
|
Twilight in the Forbidden
City
Reginald F. Johnston
Johnston was a British colonial official, scholar, writer and poet, who
lived in Chinas as tutor to the last Emperor between 1919 and 1924.
|
The Japanese - Strange but not
Strangers
Joe Joseph
The author was Tokyo correspondent for The Times
and has a particular
insight into Japanese institutions and customs.
|
Forbidden Colours
Yukio Mishima
CP Snow described Mishima as 'A most beautiful writer of prose -
clear, eloquent, visual....Mishima's characters are observed with
one of the sharpest of eyes and with maximum
chill.'
|
The Silent
Cry
Kenzaburo Oe
Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Committee said: "his
poetic
force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a
disconcerting picture of the human
predicament.'
|
East and
West
Chris Patten
The experiences of the last governor of Hong Kong.
|
The China Voyage
Tim Severin
Six men and one woman sailed across the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test
the theory that Asian sailors reached America 2,000 years ago.
|
Frontiers of Heaven
Stanley Stewart
Stewart travelled from Shanghai to the Indus.
|
Riding the Iron Rooster
Paul Theroux
Theroux spent a year travelling by every kind of train throughout China, observing his
companions in razor-sharp detail.
|
Behind the Wall
Colin Thubron
Thubron is a perceptive traveller who writes beautiful prose; without being in any way
pretentious, he manages to teach us an enormous
amount about the country and its people.
|
A History of Hong Kong
Frank Welsh
A comprehensive, absorbing and up-to-date book about the former colony.
|
Hand-Grenade Practice in
Peking
Frances Wood
A remarkable account of the year Wood spent as a student in China in 1976 .
|
Slow Boats to China
Gavin Young
A journey to China by every kind of boat.
|
AUSTRALASIA AND PACIFIC
|
Oscar and Lucinda
Peter Carey
A rich and complex novel which filled Angela Carter "with a wild,
savage
envy'.
|
The Songlines
Bruce Chatwin
A compelling book: "I have a vision of the Songlines stretching
across
the continents and
ages.'
|
Tracks
Robyn Davidson
In 1977 Robyn Davidson set off from Alice Springs by camel to cross 1,700
miles of desert and bush.
|
The Kon-Tiki Expedition
Thor Heyerdahl
Six men sailed on a primitive raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove that
"the Pacific islands are located well inside the range of prehistoric
craft from Peru.'
|
The Fatal
Shore
Robert Hughes
An immensely readable yet scholarly history which traces the fate of those who were
transported to Australia from 1787-1868.
|
The Bone People
Keri Hulme
Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, the book combines Maori
myth and Christian symbols.
|
In the Land of Oz
Howard Jacobson
An entertaining and perceptive journey round Australia.
|
Kangaroo
DH Lawrence
A partly autobiographical novel in which Lawrence examines politics and power.
|
The Collected Stories of Katherine
Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
The 73 short stories and 15 unfinished fragments in this collection are representative
of New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield's writing.
|
Sydney
Geoffrey Moorhouse
A celebration - through history and culture - of this exciting city.
|
Promised Lands
Jane Rogers
An intertwining of the first years of the convict-colony with present-day lives.
|
In the South Seas
RL Stevenson
The record of Stevenson's first year in the Marquesas.
|
The Happy Isles of Oceania
Paul Theroux
Theroux travelled from the Solomons to Fiji, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas and Easter
Island.
|
The Singing Line
Alice Thomson
The story of the man who strung the telegraph line across Australia and of the
woman who gave her name to Alice Springs.
|
The Tree of Man
Patrick White
The story of a man and woman who make their home in the outback; as
their children grow up and the wilderness begins to disappear, changes occur.
|
NORTHERN
EUROPE
|
Neither Here Nor There
Bill Bryson
Bryson's humourous sweep through Europe.
|
Notes from a Small Island
Bill Bryson
Before leaving Yorkshire for America, Bill Bryson made a last, hilarious trip round
Britain.
|
On the Black Hill
Bruce Chatwin
Rural isolation and its effect on two brothers who lived and farmed a Welsh hill farm
all their lives.
|
Walled Gardens
Annabel Davis-Goff
The author is called home from America to southern Ireland on the death of her
father, and finds herself back in the world of her Anglo-Irish chilhood - with
haunting memories of drafty houses, noisy rooks and faded chintzes.
|
Miss Smilla's Feeling for
Snow
Peter Hoeg
A small boy falls to his death from a rooftop. Compulsive reading.
|
Journey to the Hebrides
Johnson & Boswell
Both Johnson's and Boswell's books are records
of the same journey in the eighteenth century, to the Western isles and throughout
Scotland.
|
Cider
with Rosie
Laurie Lee
Classic account of rural childhood in the Cotswolds in the 1920s.
|
A Place Apart
Dervla Murphy
Northern Ireland from the inside out.
|
Round Ireland in Low Gear
Eric Newby
Eric and Wanda Newby went to Ireland by bicycle in the autumn of 1985
"to enjoy ourselves'.
|
Njal's
Saga
This, the greatest of Icelandic sagas, was written by an unknown
author
in the late thirteenth century but based on the historical events of 300 years earlier.
|
The English
Jeremy Paxman
Good and amusing descriptions of the English today.
|
Coasting
Jonathan Raban
Jonathan Raban wanted to see his island home from the sea and, in 1982,
set sail round the British Isles in a 30-foot ketch.
|
Berlin - the Biography of a
City
Anthony Read & David Fisher
An essential guide to the past, present and future.
|
Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Labyrinth
Tim Robinson
An encyclopaedic survey of the Aran Islands.
|
The Embarrassment of
Riches
Simon Schama
The social and cultural history of Holland in its golden age - and much more.
|
Kingdom by the Sea
Paul Theroux
An account of a three-month journey round Britain by foot, bus and
train. An attempt not only to see Britain but to describe the British in all their aspects.
|
A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway
& Denmark
Mary Wollstonecroft
The author travelled alone through Scandinavia in 1795, in search of
happiness in the remote backwoods.
|
CENTRAL AND EASTERN
EUROPE
|
Danube
Claudio Magris
A wide-ranging and excitingly original book about the Danube and the
history, philosophy, people, war and politics that occur along its route.
|
Stalingrad
Antony Beevor
A brilliant and scholarly new look at the city and its wartime seige.
|
The Accursed Mountains
Robert Carver
A journey into wild and inaccesible Albania.
|
Utz
Bruce Chatwin
A novel about a compulsive porcelain collector in the Jewish quarter of Prague.
|
The Heart of Europe
Norman Davies
Although this history begins in 1945, Davies looks back to the past to
illustrate his theories.
|
Prague in Black and Gold
Peter Demetz
A love-hate account of the author's obsession with
Prague.
|
Stalin
Isaac Deutscher
The classic biography of one of Russia's more controversial figures.
|
One Hot Summer in St Petersburg
Duncan Fallowell
An honest, funny and passionate book.
|
The House by the Dvina
Eugenie Fraser
Russia before, during and after the revolution is delightfully evoked by
Eugenia Fraser, who was half-Scottish and half-Russian.
|
The Fall of Yugoslavia
Misha Glenny
Causes, effects and dangers of the latest Balkan crisis.
|
On Foot to the Golden
Horn
Jason Goodwin
A record of Goodwin's journey through Eastern Europe to Istanbul.
|
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass
A scathing dissection of the years 1925-1955 through the eyes of a dwarf.
|
The Good Soldier Svejk
J Hasek
A rambling but classic story about Svejk, an everyman figure who creates havoc in
the Czech army during World War I.
|
The Castle
Franz Kafka
Modernist allegory about K the unwanted Land Surveyor, who is never admitted to
the Castle.
|
The Unbearable Lightness of
Being
M Kundera
A tragic and entertaining novel which puts a new perspective on living.
|
Between the Woods and the
Water
Patrick Leigh Fermor
The second part of the trilogy describes Leigh Fermor's journey
from the
woods of Transylvania to the waters of the Danube.
|
A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor
The first of a trilogy in which Leigh Fermor walked from London to Istanbul in the
1930s.
|
The Drowned and the
Saved
Primo Levi
Levi committed suicide shortly after completing this book which dispels the myth that
he forgave the Germans for Auschwitz.
|
Kosovo - A Short History
Noel Malcolm
A brilliantly researched and authoratative book.
|
The Bronski House
Philip Marsden
Marsden accompanies exiled Polish poet Zofia Ilinska back to her childhood home.
|
The Crossing Place
Philip Marsden
A journey in search of the Armenians through the Middle East, Eastern
Europe and the Caucasus.
|
The Spirit-Wrestlers
Philip Marsden
A journey into the strange, ambiguous world of the Russia's ancient
religions.
|
The Big Red Train Ride
Eric Newby
Eric Newby went from Moscow to Nakhodka in 1977 with diverse companions and
some vodka.
|
Queen of Romania
Hannah Pakula
Princess Marie of Edinburgh was the grand-daughter of both Queen
Victoria and Tsar Alexander II.
|
Magic Prague
Angelo Maria Ripellino
All the mystery and magnetism of Prague.
|
Echoes of a Native Land
Serge Schhmemann
A lyrical look at two centuries in a Russian village.
|
And Quiet Flows the Don
M Sholokhov
Set in a Cossack village, Sholokhov wrote this after returning to his native Don from
Moscow.
|
The Pianist
Wladyslaw Szpilman
A young Jewish pianist survived in Warsaw against all odds.
|
Among the Russians
Colin Thubron
Thubron drove around Russia by car when this was still extremely difficult.
|
Pushkin's
Button
Serena Vitale
The story of the duel which killed the great poet.
|
MEDITERRANEAN
EUROPE
|
France in the New Century
John Ardagh
Changes in French society since 1945.
|
The Italians
Luigi Barzini
Barzini, being an Italian himself, manages to get to the real core of Italy and the
Italians by cutting through the familiar clichés.
|
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Louis de Bernieres
The young Italian officer Corelli is posted to a Greek island during World War
II.
|
South from
Granada
Gerald Brenan
Brenan lived in the village of Yegen in the Sierra Nevada for many years; here he
writes about his life there and what Granada was like in the 1920s.
|
The Golden Honeycomb
Vincent Cronin
Excellent descriptions of Sicily's art, architecture and folklore,
written in the form of a quest for the golden honeycomb which Daedalus is said to
have offered to Aphrodite in return for his escape from King Minos of Crete.
|
Bitter Lemons
Lawrence Durrell
Durrell was entranced by Cyprus in 1953, buying a house and becoming a local
teacher.
|
Prospero's Cell
Lawrence Durrell
A guide to the landscape and manners on the island of Corfu.
|
Reflections on a Marine
Venus
Lawrence Durrell
"The marine
Venus' is a statue which was found by sailors in their nets
at the bottom of Rhodes harbour and which much appealed to Durrell.
|
The Journal of a Voyage to
Lisbon
Henry Fielding
Fielding went to Portugal knowing he was dying.
|
Istanbul
John Freely
The imperial city of Romans, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.
|
Lords of the Horizons
Jason Goodwin
A history of the Ottoman Empire.
|
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
A novel which takes place during only four days of the Spanish civil war, but which
feels as if it encompasses the whole of Spain.
|
Barcelona
Robert Hughes
Hughes places Barcelona firmly in its Catalan past, realising that there is little point in
describing the new without the old.
|
Backwards out of the Big
World
Paul Hyland
Hyland crosses Portugal and meets a cross-section of people.
|
Between Hopes and
Memories
Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs travelled through every region of mainland Spain, meeting
many prominent Spaniards as well as many lesser known poets, eccentrics
and mystics.
|
Italian Journeys
Jonathan Keates
Over a period of twenty years, Keates wandered around northern
Italy visiting off-beat places.
|
The Olive Grove
Katherine Kizilos
The author returns to her father's village in the heart of the Greek
mountains.
|
The Leopard
Giuseppe di Lampedusa
In 1860 the old order still reigns in Sicily, but there are echoes of a new political
movement, with Garibaldi on the mainland.
|
DH Lawrence and
Italy
DH Lawrence
's
three books about Italy collected together: Sea and Sardinia
,
Twilight in Italy
and Etruscan Places
.
|
As I Walked Out One Midsummer
Morning
Laurie Lee
Lee walked through pre-Civil War Spain from Vigo to Malaga in 1936, busking
with his violin.
|
Mani and Roumeli
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Two of the best books on modern Greece, these are full of scholarship and
anecdotes about the history and gradual demise of many rural communities
in Greece, as well as offering superb descriptions of the countryside.
|
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Carlo Levi
Set in a remote region of Basilicata where Levi was exiled under the Fascists, a world
cut off from history and the state: "We're not
Christians, Christ stopped short of here, at
Eboli.'
|
Naples 44
Norman Lewis
Norman Lewis arrived in Naples as an Intelligence Officer attached to the American
Fifth Army and after a year there decided that, given the chance to be born again,
he would choose to be an Italian.
|
Voices of the Old Sea
Norman Lewis
Norman Lewis lived in a remote Catalan fishing village in the 1950s. This record of
how life was then offers stark contrasts to the area today.
|
The Towers of Trebizond
Rose Macaulay
The book opens with a much quoted
sentence:'"Take my camel,
dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal
on her return from
High Mass.'
|
The Stones of
Venice and Florence Observed
Mary McCarthy
An interpretation of Florence in the 1950s.
|
Constantinople
Philip Mansel
Constantinople portrayed as the imperial capital of the Ottomans.
|
Under the Tuscan Sun
Frances Mayes
Captures the feeling of living in a foreign country.
|
The Turkish Embassy
Letters
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lively letters from travels through Europe to Turkey in 1716.
|
Venice
Jan Morris
An essential companion to Venice - entertaining, ironical, witty and
high-spirited.
|
Love and War in the
Apennines
Eric Newby
The story of Newby's capture in Sicily in 1942; he escaped from the
prison camp with help from a local girl, Wanda - who later became his wife.
|
On the Shores of the Mediterranean
Eric Newby
A Mediterranean journey which took in Italy, the Adriatic, Greece, Turkey, the Levant,
North Africa and Spain.
|
Portrait of a Turkish Family
Irfan Orga
The author was born into a prosperous family under the Sultans, but in World War I
the family was ruined and Turkey transformed.
|
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
The heady feelings of the early days of the Spanish Civil War, in Barcelona, are
followed by disillusion
as the Republicans are split by factional in-fighting.
|
The Elusive Truffle
Mirabel Osler
A quest for the rapidly disappearing traditional cuisine and culture of
France.
|
Italian Education
Tim Parks
A look at the family in Italy, through the eyes of the author who lives near Verona.
|
Italian Neigbours
Tim Parks
A very readable account of how an Englishman copes in the Veneto; he learns to
accept what the locals take for granted, thereby getting to grips with the real Italy.
|
History of the Italian
People
Giuliano Procacci
Professor Procacci pinpoints 1000 A.D. as the time when European
supremacy began to take root, and traces Italy's progression within
its
European context, through the communes of the eleventh century to the
birth of the European Renaissance and the two world wars.
|
Midnight in Sicily
Peter Robb
Robb uses history, painting, literature and food in this exploration of Sicily.
|
The Tuscan Year
Elizabeth Romer
An account of traditional life and cooking in Italy.
|
Blindness
José Saramago
Blindness becomes contagious and spreads throughout the city.
|
Citizens
Simon Schama
A marvellous chronicle of the French Revolution.
|
A Fez of the Heart
Jeremy Seal
Travels through Turkey.
|
The Volcano Lover
Susan Sontag
Based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma and Lord Nelson and set
against the backdrop of Vesuvius.
|
Within Tuscany
Matthew Spender
Spender went to live in Tuscany and has written a book about his experiences which
is "by turns informative, ruminative, funny and
touching'.
|
Travels with a Donkey
R.L. Stevenson
The account of Stevenson's trip through the Cevennes with his
recalcitrant donkey, Modestine.
|
Driving Over Lemons
Chris Stewart
A sympathetic account of living in southern Spain, by ex-Genesis drummer
Stewart.
|
The Spanish Civil War
Hugh Thomas
Huge and comprehensive book about the Spanish Civil War which traces in
scrupolous detail a complicated story.
|
Journey into Cyprus
Colin Thubron
Thubron made a 600-mile trek around Cyprus during the last year of its peace.
|
The South
Colm Toibin
A painter on the run from a broken marriage flits between Spain and rural Ireland.
|
Memoirs of Hadrian
Marguerite Yourcenar
As Hadrian was dying he wrote a long valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius explaining
his philosophy about ruling the far-flung Roman Empire.
|
Labels - a Mediterranean
Journey
Evelyn Waugh
Waugh's account of a Mediterranean cruise on which he visited
Naples, Port Said, Constantinople, Athens and Barcelona.
|
THE
POLES
|
The Worst Journey in the World
Apsley Cherry-Garrard
A narrative of Scott's last expedition from when it left England in
1910
until its return to New Zealand in 1913.
|
Arctic Dreams
Barry Lopez
Magical descriptions of the Arctic landscape and the animals and peoples
who live there.
|
Nunaga
Duncan Pryde
An autobiographical account of the author's time spent among the
hunters and traders of the Canadian Arctic.
|
I May Be Some Time
Francis Spufford
A cultural history of our obsession with ice.
|
Terra Incognita
Sara Wheeler
A wonderful account of the author's stay on both British and US
bases.
|
