Armchair Travel
Travel the world through books!
June 28, 2023
Traveling the world through books is an experience unlike any other!
With every page turn, you are transported to a new destination, immersing yourself in the sights, sounds, and cultures of far-off lands. You can explore the bustling streets of Tokyo, wander through the rugged countryside of Scotland, or bask in the warm sun of the Caribbean, all from the comfort of your own home. Reading allows you to expand your horizons, gain new perspectives, and discover the beauty and diversity of our world. So why not embark on a literary adventure and explore the world, one book at a time?
Included in this list: Asia | Africa | Europe | South America | Oceania | North America | Antarctica
Asia
The Great Reclamation
Rachel Heng
A sweeping novel set in Singapore during the years leading up to its independence from British colonial powers, about one young boy from a rural fishing family and the love story that will shape his life and complicate the fate of his larger community.
Interpreter Of Maladies
Stories
Jhumpa Lahiri
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this stunning debut collection unerring charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. In stories that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner.
The Mountains Sing
Nguyen Phan Que Mai
Years after a family is forced by Vietnam’s Communist Land Reforms to abandon their farm, a granddaughter comes of age as her loved ones depart for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A first English-language translation.
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami
The tragic death of their best friend has a profound influence on the passionate relationship between Toro, a serious young college student in Tokyo, and Naoko, an introspective beauty.
Man Of My Time
Dalia Sofer
From the best-selling author of The Septembers of Shiraz comes the story of an Iranian man reckoning with his capacity for love and evil.
Africa
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
A classic novel about the confrontation of African tribal life with colonial rule tells the tragic story of a warrior whose manly, fearless exterior conceals bewilderment, fear, and anger at the breakdown of his society.
The Hundred Wells Of Salaga
Ayesha Harruna Attah
Two women in pre-colonial Ghana live very different lives, as one learns she must go from being a daydreamer to a resilient woman and the other desperately tries to play an important role in the chief’s court.
We Need New Names
NoViolet Bulawayo
Follows ten-year-old Zimbabwe native, Darling, as she escapes the closed schools and paramilitary police control of her homeland in search of opportunity and freedom with an aunt in America.
The Girl With The Louding Voice
Abi Dare
Adunni, a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who longs for an education, must find a way for her voice to be heard loud and clear in a world where she and other girls like her are taught to believe, through words and deeds, that they are nothing.
How Beautiful We Were
Imbolo Mbue
A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers.
Europe
Honey And Spice
Bolu Babalola
A young black British woman with a popular student radio show that dishes out relationship advice finds her show and her reputation on the line after she publicly makes out with a man she publicly denounced.
Four Seasons In Rome
On Twins, Insomnia, And The Biggest Funeral In The History Of The World
Anthony Doerr
Documents the award-winning writer’s experiences of living, working, and raising twin sons in Rome during the year following his receipt of a prestigious Rome Prize stipend, a period during which he attended the vigil of the dying John Paul II, brought his children on a snowy visit to the Pantheon, and befriended numerous locals.
From Scratch
A Memoir Of Love, Sicily, And Finding Home
Tembi Locke
An African-American actress recounts her romance with a Sicilian chef whose traditional family disapproved of their marriage and how she sought solace in their close-knit community after his death.
White Teeth
Zadie Smith
Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families–the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire–as they make their way in modern England.
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead
Olga Tokarczuk
When her neighbor turns up dead, and then other bodies turn up under strange circumstances, Janine, a recluse in a remote Polish village who prefers the company of animals over humans, inserts herself into the investigation.
South America
Violeta
Isabel Allende
Living out her days in a remote part of her South American homeland, Violeta finds her life shaped by some of the most important events of history as she tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others.
How To Order The Universe
Maria Jose Ferrada
A richly imaginative debut, detailing a girl and her father finding their way-and themselves-while they work as traveling hardware salesmen in Pinochet-era Chile, is a rare work of magic and originality.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.
Ways Of Going Home
Alejandro Zambra
The writer son of a quiet sympathizer with the Pinochet regime reflects on the progress of his novel, in which an unnamed boy from a Chilean suburb witnesses an earthquake and meets an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle.
Oceania
Euphoria
Lily King
Frustrated by his research efforts and depressed over the death of his brothers, Andre Banson runs into two fellow anthropologists, a married couple, in 1930s New Guinea and begins a tumultuous relationship with them.
What Alice Forgot
Liane Moriarty
Suffering an accident that causes her to forget the last 10 years of her life, Alice is astonished to discover that she is 39 years old, a mother of three children and in the midst of an acrimonious divorce from a man she dearly loves.
Sharks In The Time Of Saviors
Kawai Strong Washburn
When a child falls overboard and is returned safely to his mother by a shark, his miraculous rescue is hailed as a sign from ancient Hawaiian gods, complicating his family’s troubles amid a collapsing sugarcane industry.
North America
When We Were Birds
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
The introduction of a singularly stunning new voice in fiction, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds is a mythic love story set in contemporary Trinidad & Tobago about two young outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.
Breath, Eyes, Memory
Edwidge Danticat
A young Haitian girl comes of age torn between two cultures–the Haiti of her Tante Atie and Grandmother Ife, and the New York of her mother Martine.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
When independent Janie Crawford returns home, her small African-American community begins to buzz with gossip about the outcome of her affair with a younger man, in a novel set in the 1930s South.
A Brief History Of Seven Killings
Marlon James
A tale inspired by the 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley spans decades and continents to explore the experiences of journalists, drug dealers, killers, and ghosts against a backdrop of social and political turmoil.
The Prophets
Robert Jones, Jr
Two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation find refuge in each other while transforming a quiet shed into a haven for their fellow slaves, before an enslaved preacher declares their bond sinful.
Antarctica
Lean Fall Stand
Jon McGregor
After a catastrophic Antarctic expedition, Robert Wright is so distressed he becomes unable to communicate the truth and must learn a whole new way to be in the world, in a new novel from the award-winning author of Reservoir 13.
South Pole Station
Ashley Shelby
Unexpectedly qualifying for an unusual job at South Pole Station, Cooper Gosling journeys to Antarctica and engages in a comedy of errors with a group of fellow misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own.
Good Dogs Don’t Make It To The South Pole
Hans-Olav Thyvold
A heartwarming tale of aging, friendship and death is told from the perspective of a grumpy mutt who bonds with his late master’s widow during walks to the library, before their home is threatened by impatient relatives.