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ALMOST FRENCH
Sarah Turnbull
In the bestselling tradition of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun, Chris Stewart's A Parrot in the Pepper Tree or Peter Mayle, but without the pile of stones! A funny, perceptive and poignant memoir of one woman's personal journey to Paris, and of the life that she makes there as a woman straight from Australia. A true story of a fish out of water in the most magical city in the world. A spectacular example of culture clash and a happy ending.
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CLIMBING THE MANGO TREES
MADHUR Jaffrey
"I was born in a sprawling house by the Yamuna River in Delhi. When I was a few minutes old, Grandmother welcomed me into the world by writing 'Om', which means 'I am' in Sanskrit, on my tongue with a little finger dipped in honey. When the family priest arrived to draw up my horoscope, he scribbled astrological symbols on a long scroll and set down a name for me, Indrani, or 'queen of the heavens".
My father ignored him completely and proclaimed my name was to be Madhur ('sweet as honey').' So begins Madhur Jaffrey's enchanting memoir of her childhood in India. Her description of growing up in a very large, wealthy family (half a train was booked to transport the family from Delhi to the mountains for the summer) conjures up the spirit of a long-lost age. Whether climbing the mango trees in her grandparents' orchard, armed with a mixture of salt, pepper, red chillies and roasted cumin, or enjoying picnics in the foothills of the Himalayas, reached by foot, rickshaw, palanquin or horse, where meatballs stuffed with sultanas and mint leaves, cauliflowers flavoured with ginger and coriander, and spiced pooris with hot green mango pickle were devoured, food forms a major leitmotiv of this beautifully written memoir.
With recipes drawn from memories of dinners, lunches, breakfasts, weddings and picnics, moving effortlessly from the lamb meatballs of Moghul emperors to the tamarind chutneys of the streets, this book will appeal to keen armchair cooks, as well as fans of Madhur, the world over.
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REUNION IN BARSALOI
HOFMANN Corinne
Fourteen years after fleeing Kenya with her baby daughter, Corinne returned in the summer of 2004 to meet Lketinga and his family again in their village, Barsaloi. Nervous as she was, and uncertain as to how he would react on seeing her again, she found to her relief that she was welcomed unreservedly by all those who remembered her - by Lketinga, who still thought of her as his 'wife number one', by his brother, James, now a schoolteacher and especially by Lketinga's mother, who had looked after Corinne with such care all those years before. Corinne Hofmann revisits an area of a country which she cares about passionately, describing in her immensely readable style the changes she saw after her time away, and once again bringing to life the atmosphere and characters in the Masai village.
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THE ROAD TO OXIANA
BYRON Robert
In 1933, Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Teheran to Oxiana - the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. "The Road to Oxiana" offers not only a wonderful record of his adventures, but also a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers.
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TRICKSTER TRAVELS
ZEMON DAVIS Natalie
Captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptised, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone, Al-Hasan al-Wazzan - or Leo Africanus - is a celebrated but hitherto elusive figure. Here, in "Trickster Travels", distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial and often contradictory traces that Al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his Extraordinary life and work.
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LIKE NOWHERE ELSE
WOODS Denyse
In the run-up to the second Gulf War a young Irishwoman, Vivien, fulfilling her dream of seeing the magical land of Yemen, starts a passionate affair with a charismatic English anthropologist. However, he has a traumatic history with the woman who was once Vivien's best friend, a history he doesn't realise Vivien knows all about, leaving her battling the conflicting demands of loyalty and love. A gripping depiction of a female friendship disintegrating, and of disillusionment, jealousy and obsession
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THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE
ROBB Graham
It's easy to reduce France to the sum of its parts: weekend breaks amid the culture of Paris or summer holidays basking in the sunshine of the south; accounts of the Revolution, Madame Defarge knitting beside the guillotine, and Napoleon's battle at Waterloo (mis)remembered from school history lessons; a country famous for its intellectuals, its philosophers and writers, its fashion, food and wine. Despite this, however, the notion of 'the French' as one nation is relatively recent and, historically speaking, quite misleading; in order to discover the 'real' past of France, it's not only necessary to go back in time, but also to go at a slower pace than modern life generally allows: this book is the result of 14,000 miles covered by bicycle (and four years spent in the library). It is at last a book which tells the whole story.
Funny, enterprisingly researched, and undertaken with few apparent preconceptions ...This is an excellent, amusing, decent book, which covers an enormous amount of ground in a little space (Philp Hensher, Spectator).
A fascinating study of a complex subject, written with humanity, sceptical intelligence and an impressive command of the sources ( Daily Telegraph).
A fascinating mix of personal testimony and judiciously filleted history. (The Times).
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MERDE HAPPENS
Stephen Clarke
Paul West is in deep financial merde. His only way out of debt is to accept a decidedly dodgy job that involves him crossing the USA in a Mini, while pretending to be typically British. Adding to the crush in the car is Paul's French girlfriend, Alexa, and his American poet friend Jake whose main aim in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world.
Preferably in the back of Paul's Mini. But as the little car battles from New York to Miami, and then heads west, legroom turns out to be the least of Paul's troubles. His work is being sabotaged, his tour plans are in tatters, and his love life becomes a Franco-American war zone.
And as Paul knows better than anyone, when you mix love and war - merde happens ...
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THE HEART OF THE WORLD
Ian Baker
A pilgrimage, as much as an exploration, this is a brilliant, magically written account of a journey that is physical and spiritual. "The Heart of the World" is the story of the most captivating story of exploration of recent memory, an extraordinary journey into one of the most inaccessible places on earth, a mediation on our place in nature and a pilgrimage into the Tibetan Buddhist faith. Ian Baker travels into the Tsangpo gorge, the world's deepest and impenetrable chasm, searching for a mythical waterfall that ancient Tibetan tradition believes to the gateway to a mystical paradise, Shangri-La.;The heart of the Tsangpo gorge was fully explored only recently by Ian Baker, after years of interviewing lamas, deciphering obscure Buddhist texts and making pilgrimages to the gorge. He descended into the gorge and made international news by finding a 108-foot-high waterfall.
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THE MAGIC SPRING
Richard Lewis
Starting with the conviction that England must have a folklore as compelling as that of other more romantic places, like Ireland or Morocco, Richard Lewis embarks on a search for English tradition. From the Morris-dancers of the Cotswolds to a magic circle of witches deep beneath the Forest of Dean, Lewis plunges into the nation's rituals to tell a story that is at once personal, historical and universal.
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ROAD FEVER
Time Cahill
Driving 15 000 miles from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a record-breaking twenty-three and a half days, Tim Cahill's "Road Fever" is a hilarious account of a preposterous journey, a breathtaking tour of North and South America, as well as a veritable how-to for pulling off cheeky scams to get ahead. All in the spirit of getting his name written into the record books. Told with the humour, knowledge, and propriety-be-damned attitude that have made his other adventure books such critical and popular successes, Cahill embarks on his fastest, funniest trip yet.
He reveals everything there is to know about surviving South America on a diet of beef jerky and Farmer's milk shakes and getting General Motors and the Guinness Book of World Records to subsidize his wanderlust.
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YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY
Dave Eggers
The story is that of Will and Justin - called "Hand" - and their frenetic trip to get rid of some money that Will has that he doesn't want. It all occurs in the aftermath of the death of their best friend, Jack, in a freak truck accident. Jack's death appears to have occurred fairly recently, and there has been another recent incident along the way where Will has been badly beaten up, which he blames Hand for. This recurring undertone simmers throughout the novel as Will is still black and blue on this frantic trip through Senegal, Morocco, Estonia and Latvia en route to Egypt, Greenland, Madagascar or Mongolia, depending on which flights are available. You'll have to read the novel to find out what I mean.
The novel is raucously funny and touchingly poignant, often in the same paragraph as it recounts the tale of Will and Hand currently aged 26, and also Will and Hand when they were just kids, through fairly disrupted childhoods. While Will is the narrator, it is as much the story of Hand as that of Will, and contains remarkable insights nutshelling the human condition, as much in their deeds as in their thoughts. Both guys certainly seem to exist with a heavy measure of aftertaste, lives initially filled with promise which have petered out into a holding pattern of day-to-day drudgery and unfulfilled potential.
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A YEAR IN GREEN TEA & TUK-TUKS
Rory Spowers
BBC journalist and environmentalist Rory Spowers wanted to finally live his dream and abandon life in London for a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle. Moving with his wife and two toddler sons to a 60-acre abandoned tea estate in Sri Lanka, Rory sets out to create a model organic farm there and earn his livelihood from the land. The fascinating story begins with the tsunami and Rory's sudden involvement with the relief efforts, and charts the course of his adventures over 12 months culminating in the launch of his new business (making a living by selling the produce he grows).
It chronicles the highs and lows of this radical change, and reveals what it takes to live a sustainable life. It will also include tips for those of you who wish to live a more environmentally friendly life. Spowers'"writing in 'Three Men on a Bike", which recounted his story of buying the Goodies' bicycle and riding it across Africa for charity, was compared with Bryson, Palin and Hawks' for his storytelling, humour and intrepid spirit.
Spowers' narrative brims with adventure, harrowing moments, and small triumphs as he comes to know the people and the land and works toward creating his dream of a sustainable, model forest garden.
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THE SHADOW OF THE SUN
Ryszard Kapuscinski
"Only with the greatest of simplifications, for the sake of convenience, can we say Africa. In reality, except as a geographical term, Africa doesn't exist". Ryszard Kapuscinski has been writing about the people of Africa throughout his career.
In a study that avoids the official routes, palaces and big politics, he sets out to create an account of post-colonial Africa seen at once as a whole and as a location that wholly defies generalised explanations. It is both a sustained meditation on themosaic of peoples and practices we call "Africa", and an impassioned attempt to come to terms with humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign domination, from the intoxications of freedom, from war and from politics as theft.
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THE LAST RESORT
Carmen Posadas
Rafael Molinet Rojas, an inconspicuous Spaniard living in London, feels that life is not worth living when his mother, his closest companion, dies. Hoping to make a dignified and stylish exit from this world, Molinet plans his last days, picking an elegant setting for his suicide via sleeping pills: Morocco's L'Hirondelle d'Or, one of the most luxurious resorts in the world. In the resort, he hopes to forget about his troubles, stroll around in a white caftan, and try to make a little money playing backgammon before he does himself in.
But the day before his trip, Molinet has a lunch date with his vivacious niece, who enthralls him with the story of a scandalous and deeply suspicious death. Jaime Valdes, a high-society lothario, has seemingly choked to death in the presence of both his mistress and his wife, but all of Spain is awash with rumours of murder. When Molinet arrives at the luxury spa, he realizes that the stylish woman sitting by the pool is none other than Valdes' widow.
And when a throng of gossipy Europeans turns up, it becomes clear that many sinister things are happening at L'Hirondelle, despite its air of tranquility. In this charged atmosphere, Molinet's eavesdropping leads to a startling turn of events. A tale of high-society, murder and privilege, "The Last Resort" is a literary whodunit to compare with the classics of its kind.
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ATOMIC SUSHI
Simon May
As the first British Professor of Philosophy since 1882 to be invited to teach at the prestigious and enigmatic University of Tokyo - the Oxbridge of Japan - Simon May enjoyed a degree of access denied to other commentators. Each chapter of the book focuses on some everyday human matter, such as love, death, bureaucracy, hygiene, food, toilets, commuting, education, marriage and memory. Japanese attitudes to such issues are explored through a mixture of lighthearted anecdote and trenchant analysis, and through his vivid accounts of Kafkaesque bureaucracy, flying goldfish, gangsters at funerals, businessmen paying good money to be whipped, doctors faking death certificates and cover-ups at all levels of society.
"Atomic Sushi" is the first book to provide so much anecdotal material and the first book to herald Japan's resurgence after over a decade of recession.
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SLOGGING THE SLAVS:
A PARANORMAL CRICKET TOUR
FROM THE BALTIC TO THE BOSPHORUS
Angus Bell
Scotsman Angus Bell is innocently working for the Montreal Mafia when a Canadian psychic tells him an infant ghost is feeding him ideas. He's told he'll be leaving North America to embark on a travelling media project. When the words "cricket" and "Ukraine" pop into his head, he uncovers a hidden cricketing world across Central and Eastern Europe.
From tournaments on ice in Estonia to university leagues in the Crimea; from a Croatian military island to communist Belarus, the Englishman's game is thriving. 24-year-old Angus sets off in his Skoda to smack them all for six. With fingerless 'Tamil Tigers' in Prague, a bomb plotter in the Austrian Alps, mafiosos and an MI6 secret agent making the teamsheets, Angus soon discovers a shadowy side of Slavic cricket.
He becomes the first man to hit a ball between continents, and ends up captain of an international cricket team. Slogging The Slavs is a unique traveller's tale, taking the reader through border bribes, international drug-busts, Romanian dental surgeries and Sarajevan graveyards. In the company of anarchists, tobacco farmers, babushkas and The KGB, Bell re-defines the spirit of cricket and will make the game's most sworn enemy a fan.
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ON A SHOESTRING TO COORG :
AN EXPERIENCE OF SOUTHERN INDIA
Dervla Murphy
With her five-year-old daughter as travelling companion, Dervla Murphy, veteran of solo journeys by mule and bicycle to some of the most inaccessible places on earth, sets off for Bombay, with plans to meander through southern India. Dervla and Rachel travelled by boat and by peasant-filled bus, making myriad freinds along the way. They fell in love with Coorg, the smallest of India's provinces, and stayed there for two months.
Dervla Murphy's account of this remote mountain paradise, famed for its landscapes, scented with honey, cardamon and oranges, brings to life the beautiful landscapes and friendly people of a little-known part of the sub-continent. Murphy also records the harshness of Indian peasant life but also the warmth and spontaneity of the Indian people.
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RETURN TO TIBET
Heinrich Harrer
Seven Years in Tibet told of an idyllic life on the 'rooftop of the world', before Harrer was forced to flee from the invading Chinese armies. Thirty years later, he returns to describe how the Chinese have attempted to destroy this ancient civilisation. Meeting old Tibetan acquaintances, including the Dalai Lama now living in exile in northern India, Harrer examines the current thaw in Peking's relations with this isolated and mysterious country.
In its vivid evocation of Tibet, past and present, Return to Tibet provides a fascinating insight into the durability of this profoundly spiritual culture.
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MUMBAI TO MECCA
Ilija Trojanow
In 2003, Ilija Trojanow traveled from Mumbai to Mecca. His travelogue, in the tradition of the rihla, one of the oldest genres of classical Arabic literature, describes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam, through the eyes of a Westerner, but with the heart of a Muslim. "From the very first moment they realize that the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca) is among the duties of each and every Muslim, the faithful long to go." So one January morning Trojanow, with the help of his friends donned the ihram, the traditional garb of the pilgrim, and boarded a plane in Mumbai to fly to Dhiba. He joined hundreds of thousands of Muslims, who go each year on the Hajj, the greatest demonstration of the Muslim faith. A few hours later he arrived in Mecca, and just three weeks later he was back in India. In those three short weeks he experienced a tradition dating back over one thousand years and completed a personal pilgrimage. This is his account; personal and yet enlightening for the interested that are barred as a non-Muslim from the holy sites of Islam.
Ilija Trojanov was born in Bulgaria in 1965. After fleeing his homeland via Yugoslavia and Italy, he was granted political asylum in Germany. He spent ten years in Kenya and five years in Mumbai, before moving to Capetown in 2003. He is a writer who sees himself as a traveler between worlds, journeying on a quest that leads him through different cultures and religions.
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THE FLANEUR
Edmund White
A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, taking us into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. Entering the Marias evokes the history of Jews in France, just a visit to the Haynes grill recalls the presence - festive, troubled - of black Americans in Paris for a century and a half.
Gays, Decadents, even Royalists past and present are all subjected to the flaneur's scrutiny. Edmund White's "The Flaneur" is opinionated, personal, subjective. As he conducts us through the bookshops and boutiques, past the monuments and palaces, filling us in on the gossip and background of each site, he allows us to see through the blank walls and past the proud edifices and to glimpse the inner, human drama.
Along the way he recounts everything from the latest debates among French law-makers to the juicy details of Colette's life in the Palais Royal, even summoning up the hothouse atmosphere of Gustave Moreau's atelier. Coming soon in the series are: "Ahdaf Soueif on Cairo", "Peter Carey on Sydney" and "Rubem Fonseca on Rio".
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AN ENGLISHMAN AMOUREUX
Michael Sadler
Love in deepest France ...After the romantic encounter in the Loire Valley bathroom at the end of AN ENGLISHMAN A LA CAMPAGNE Sadler dumps the University of Swindon and returns to France intent on winning the heart of Lou Charpin, his belle francaise. Easier said than done. Unsure of his credentials he decides to woo her family at the same time ...playing Scrabble with the fiesty, Craven A-smoking grandmother; lending his farmhouse to his future chaud lapin (hot rabbit?) of a brother-in-law; explaining King Lear to an adolescent more intent on sowing birdseed in his window boxes; surviving a Greek Tragedy-style family Christmas, at which he foolishly translates jokes from crackers, and - le comble de l'arrogance - weening Lou Charpin away from her French copain, a plutocratic optician who is less than appreciative of rivalry from the barbaric north ...How do you love a la francaise? Are they better at it than us? That is the question.
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A
WRITER’S WORLD
Jan Morris
The first book to distill Jan Morris's entire
body of work into one volume, The World is a
magnum opus by the most-celebrated travel writer
in the world. To read it is to take an epic
armchair journey through the last half of twentieth-century
history.
A breathtakingly vivid guide to our greatest
cosmopolitan cities and cultures from Manhattan
to Venice and from Baghdad to Barbados, this
book assembles fifty years of Morris's finest
travel writing. With eyewitness accounts of
such seminal moments as the first successful
ascent of Everest, the Eichmann trial, the fall
of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong
Kong,
The World promises to create an entirely new
generation of Jan Morris readers.
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2003.
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BRIEF
ENCOUNTERS
Michelle De Kretser (Editor)
This collection of stories from 22 authors from
around the world concerns travel romances.
A tourist in Peru falls for her handsome guide;
a writer explores the ambiguities of his relationship
with a Japanese woman; and a beautiful Italian
on a train proposes marriage
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TRAVEL WITH CHILDREN
Maureen Wheeler, Cathy Lanigan (Editor)
It's a small world after all! This well-researched
guide now covers every region of the globe,
proving it's actually quite a kid-friendly place.
With travel advice that's as heavy on fun as
it is on practicalities, the main goal is to
ensure kids enjoy their trips as much as grown-ups
do.
Travel with Children is brimming with tips on
tantrum-free travel with toddlers to teens.
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AMONG
THE RUSSIAN
Colin Thubron
Among the Russians is a marvellous account of
a solitary journey by car from St. Petersburg
and the Baltic States south to Georgia and Armenia.
A gifted writer and intrepid traveller, Thubron
grapples with the complexities of Russian identity
and relays his extraordinary journey in characteristically
lyrical style.
This is an enthralling and revealing account
of the habits and idiosyncrasies of a fascinating
nation along with a sharp and insightful social
commentary of Russian life.
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THE
ART OF TRAVEL
Alain De Botton
Few things are as exciting as the idea of travelling
somewhere far from home. Somewhere with better
weather, more interesting customs and more inspiring
landscapes.
So why are we so often dissatisfied with the
reality of travel?
In "The Art of Travel" Alain de Botton,
author of "The Consolidations of Philosophy",
takes us on a journey through the satisfactions
and disappointments of travelling. Dealing -
among other things - with airports, exotic carpets,
holiday romances and hotel mini-bars, this book
reveals the hidden motivations, expectations
and complications of our voyages into the wide
world.
Accompanying him on his journey are writers,
artists and thinkers who were inspired by travel
in all its forms: Gustave Flaubert, Edward Hopper,
Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, Ruskin - all
ready to give us their insights on the curious
business of travelling.
The perfect antidote to those guidebooks that
tell us what to do when we get there, "The
Art of Travel" tries to explain why we
really wanted to go there in the first place
- and modestly suggests how we could learn to
be happier on our journeys.
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Lonely
Planet Journeys :
LOST JAPAN
Alex Kerr
Drawing on the author's personal experiences
of Japan over a period of over 30 years, this
book takes its readers on a backstage tour,
exploring different facets of the author's involvement
with the country.
The Japanese edition of this book was awarded
the 1994 Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize.
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Motoring
with Mohammed:
Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea
(Methuen Non-fiction)
Eric Hansen
This travelogue begins with the terrifying account
of the storm that left Eric Hansen and four
companions shipwrecked on a deserted Red Sea
island.
Rescued by smugglers and taken to the Yemen
coast, Hansen found himself increasingly enthralled
by this little-known land, intrigued by its
customs, charmed by its natural beauty and captivated
by its people as he travelled the country, seeking
out its wildest geography and rarest wildlife
while searching for a way to retrieve the travel
journals he lost in the shipwreck.
A humorous mix of reportage, comedy and tension,
this is a glimpse into a country insufficiently
understood by the West, and into a culture at
once secretive and friendly, alien and enchanting.
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A
Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant
traveller, but even when he stays safely at
home he can’t contain his curiosity about
the world around him.
A short history of Nearly Everything is his
quest to understand everything that had happened
from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization
– how we got from there, being nothing
at all, to here, being us.
The ultimate eye-opening journey through time
and space, revealing the world in a way most
of us have never seen it before.
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