Riffling our way around the world through good literature

10th February 2022

You know how we love a good book that evokes location! Now several authors have curated their own lists and presented them in a multitude of ways to whet the appetite of the armchair traveller. Ann Morgan’s book, Reading the World, perhaps set the standard for this kind of collection – identifying which countries to feature and then sampling a book from every nation. We invite you to join us riffling our way around the world through good literature!

Reading the World by Ann Morgan

In 2012, the world arrived in London for the Olympics…and Ann Morgan went out to meet it. She read her way around all the globe’s 196 independent countries (plus one extra), sampling one book from every nation – from classics and folk tales to current favourites and commercial triumphs, via novels, short stories, memoirs, biographies, narrative poems and countless mixtures of all these things.

It wasn’t easy. Many languages have next to nothing translated into English; there are tiny, tucked-away places where very little is written down at all; some governments don’t like to let works of art leak out to corrupt Westerners.

Her literary adventures shed light on the issues that affect us all: personal, political, national and global. What is cultural heritage? How do we define national identity? Is it possible to overcome censorship and propaganda? And how can we celebrate, challenge and change our remarkable world?

Read The World by Pushpinder Khaneka

Read your way across the world – and get to know it better. READ THE WORLD recommends the best three books on more than 50 countries, taking readers on a trip through Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The mix of novels and non-fiction books – both classic and contemporary – goes beyond being merely set on location to reveal something of each country’s soul. Whether you’re an intrepid traveller or an armchair adventurer, climb aboard for a literary journey to counter different people and places, and learn more about them. Enjoy the trip! This book started out as a feature on the Guardian website, and has been revised and expanded.

Around The World in 80 Novels by Henry Russell

Whether you’re a regular globe-trotter or an armchair traveller, these 80 works conjure up the spirit of place for locations on every continent.

Sometimes the setting of a novel is as important as the story – where would Dickens be without London, or Edith Wharton without New York? Who can read Jamaica Inn and not want to visit Bodmin Moor, or enjoy Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and not wonder whether perhaps Botswana should be on your bucket list? Covering every corner of the world, from the most visited cities of Europe to the rural outposts of Australia, there are classics by famous authors, alongside works by new writers. Sometimes a native of the country is best able to convey its true nature, but then an outside observer can recreate the attraction of the unknown. Whether you have already decided on a destination and want to get a feel for the place, or you are just looking for ideas for your next getaway, Around the World in 80 Novels is full of inspirational reads that will fire your imagination and have you reaching for your suitcase.

Literary Places by Sarah Baxter, illustrations by Amy Grimes

Travel journalist Sarah Baxter provides comprehensive and atmospheric outlines of the history and culture of 25 literary places around the globe, as well as how they intersect with the lives of the authors and the works that make them significant. Full-page colour illustrations instantly transport you to each location. You’ll find that these places are not just backdrops to the tales told, but characters in their own right.

Travel to the sun-scorched plains of Don Quixote’s La Mancha, roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Cathy and Heathcliff or view Central Park through the eyes of J.D. Salinger’s antihero. Explore the lush and languid backwaters of Arundhati Roy’s Kerala, the imposing precipice of Joan Lindsay’s Hanging Rock and the labyrinthine streets and sewers of Victor Hugo’s Paris.

Delve into this book to discover some of the world’s most fascinating literary places and the novels that celebrate them.

Literary Landscapes by John Sutherland (editor)

Literary Landscapes draws together those well-loved authors who are synonymous with a place and time, celebrating Hardy’s Wessex, Joyce’s Dublin and Du Maurier’s Cornwall. It comes right up to date with recent bestsellers, such as Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize winning The Luminaries, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. International in breadth and scope, its charm lies in the way these favourites are interspersed with the unfamiliar, providing much to explore.

Led by John Sutherland, a team of specialist literary critics have contributed individual essays on over 70 literary novels where landscape is as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognized. Entries are beautifully illustrated with archive material, original artworks, maps and photographs.

Around The World in 80 Books by David Damrosch

Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel prizewinners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways the world bleeds into literature.

To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience, and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we’re entering. Taken together, these eighty titles offer us fresh perspective on perennial problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat and the patriarchal structures within and against which many of these books’ heroines have to struggle, from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to that of Margaret Atwood today.

Around the World in 80 Books is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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