Our Giant Travel Reading List

By Alex Postman at Yolo Journal

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

Book that sparked a trip to a certain place?

“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

Which book opened your eyes to see a place or culture in a completely new way?

“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

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

“Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet filled me with a longing for Egypt.” —Jamshyd Sethna

“The Sheltering Sky and Collected Short Stories by Paul Bowles. I just had to visit Morocco after reading him.” —Jamshyd Sethna

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

Italy

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Venice). ❥ A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (Florence). ❥ In Sicily by Norman Lewis.” —Jamshyd Sethna

Any lesser-known/obscure travel books you believe deserve more recognition?

Into the Heart of Borneo & In Trouble Again by Redmond O’Hanlon. —Jamshyd Sethna

Which classic travel book remains relevant or essential today?

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron —Jamshyd Sethna

Any books that feel very dated or un-PC that are still worth a read?

“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

Best audiobook or podcast you’ve listened to in the travel genre?

“‘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