Any story set in Nigeria must contend with the country"s inherently dramatic setting: it"s a larger-than-life nation with a long and complex history, and myriad languages and cultures.
I would suggest beginning your reading with a few books by Chinua Achebe, especially his best known novel, Things Fall Apart. Originally published in 1958, it provides one of the best pictures of colonial Africa ever written. But also check out Anthills of the Savannah, which describes a country in post-colonial Africa clearly based on Achebe"s native Nigeria. The Education of a British-Protected Child is filled with thought-provoking essays, including one on racism in Joseph Conrad"s Heart of Darkness.
In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"s Purple Hibiscus, we are transported into the life of privileged teenager Kambili, as she and her older brother, JaJa, try to survive a violent religious-fanatic father inside their home and the dangerous sociopolitical situation engulfing the country. Kambili is a character who will remain with you long after the last page of this beautiful and heartrending novel is turned. Adichie is also the author of the novel Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of stories that are set in both the United States and her still politically volatile homeland.
Adimchinma Ibe"s Treachery in the Yard: A Nigerian Thriller introduces Detective Peterside to readers, and undoubtedly we"ll see much more of him in the years to come.
I"ve concluded that many of the best novels set in contemporary Nigeria by native Nigerian writers can best be described as being vivid (sometimes painfully so) and violent (also sometimes painfully so); two that I have not been able to forget (and probably never will) are Chris Abani"s GraceLand and Helon Habila"s Waiting for an Angel.
Other books set in Nigeria include I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, a humorous yet thought-provoking novel about Internet scammers in Nigeria; and Sefi Atta"s dynamic first novel, Everything Good Will Come, a bitingly funny take on two women"s attempts to figure out their roles in post-colonial Lagos.
An important part of the heart-tugging (but not sentimental) and unforgettable novel Little Bee by Chris Cleave is set in Nigeria. It"s the story of the relationship between an older British woman and a young Nigerian girl whom she and her husband meet on a beach during what is supposed to be an idyllic vacation for the British couple. This is an absolutely perfect choice for book groups.
NORTH AFRICAN NOTES.
North Africa is that part of the world that is on the southern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, reaching from Egypt in the east to Tangier in the west. The best book covering the whole area that I"ve found is Michael Mewshaw"s Between Terror and Tourism: An Overland Journey Across North Africa. Not only is the first half of the t.i.tle pretty neat, but since this inviting, chatty account is filled with fascinating bits of information and references to and quotations from other writers (Cavafy and Baudelaire, to name only two), I had to keep putting down the book and copying pa.s.sages into the notebook I keep for such things. Books on Egypt, a major player in North Africa, can be found in its own self-t.i.tled section.
Algeria.
Two important works of nonfiction on the history of Algeria and its long, awful fight to free itself from its colonial master, France, are Alistair Horne"s A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 and Ted Morgan"s My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir.
Elizabeth Hawes"s Camus: A Romance combines biography (of French writer Albert Camus) with memoir. (Hawes became entranced with Camus when she was a college student.). Although there"s much here that takes place in France, there"s enough focus on Algiers (and, in particular, Camus"s childhood) to make it a necessary accompaniment to any reading for travel-to-Algeria purposes. Or just for the pleasure of encountering a man who had a fine mind and a n.o.ble spirit.
Although it was published posthumously and is not considered to be his best novel, Camus"s The First Man is probably his most autobiographical, and is certainly the one most closely linked to his childhood in Algiers. (Camus was born in Oran, where he set his novels The Plague and The Stranger.) Next to Camus,Yasmina Khadra is probably Algeria"s most famous writer, although most of his novels are set elsewhere (his best-known novel for American audiences is The Swallows of Kabul). The author, who was once a high-ranking military officer with the Algerian army, wrote his books under a (female) pseudonym in order to avoid political repercussions. (He"s now in exile, in France.) Mystery lovers on their way to Algeria will want to try Khadra"s Inspector Llob series; the first one is Morituri, but my favorite is Double Blank.
Loving Graham Greene, Gloria Emerson"s first novel, is both tragic and funny. Wealthy and eccentric Molly Benson, who has a pa.s.sion for Graham Greene and his work, travels to Algeria in 1992 (the year after Greene"s death) with two friends in order to give money to writers there who are targets of the country"s fundamentalists. This is a tale of three innocents abroad, the sort of people who believe that their good works (and pure motives) will protect them from harm. One could easily imagine how much Greene himself would have enjoyed reading it.
Harbor, a wrenching first novel by journalist Lorraine Adams, is about a Muslim from Algeria who arrives illegally in America in the 1990s. Aziz Arkoun is a deserter from the Algerian army and becomes caught up in America"s domestic war on terror following 9/11. This is one of those novels that raises uncomfortable questions for readers: how do we know whom to trust; how can we best accommodate new immigrants who are fleeing for their lives but don"t qualify as "political refugees" under the law; which should prevail when individual rights come into conflict with what we"re told is our national interest; and who or what defines a "terrorist"?
Other novels set in Algeria include Brian Moore"s The Magician"s Wife, which takes place during the Napoleonic period, and Claire Messud"s The Last Life, which describes the experiences of one French family during the last days of French rule.
For a change of pace, take a look at Joann Sfar"s The Rabbi"s Cat and its sequel, The Rabbi"s Cat 2, a pair of graphic novels set in the once flourishing Jewish community in Algeria. They"re about a cat who swallows a parrot, learns to talk, and develops a devouring (sorry!) interest in everything related to Judaism.
Morocco.
Whenever there"s talk about literature and Morocco, or travel and Morocco, it"s pretty certain that Paul Bowles"s life and books will be mentioned early in the conversation, since he spent many years as an expatriate there and is closely identified (at least in American minds) with the country. (See the section "The Sahara: Sand Between Your Toes" for more about Bowles"s best-known book.) So try to get whatever you know about the country, and Bowles, out of your head for a while, and concentrate on these.
One of my favorite writers, Edith Wharton, visited the country in 1917 and wrote In Morocco about her time there. What took away from the delight of reading a previously unknown-to me-Wharton book was the anti-Semitism that creeps in a bit here and there throughout the text.
Tony Ardizzone"s Larabi"s Ox: Stories of Morocco is a series of interconnected stories about three Americans who arrive in the country for different reasons and find (or not) what they came for.
French Moroccan Tahar Ben Jelloun explores the post-colonial country in The Last Friend, the story of the relationship between Ali and Mamed, childhood best friends, now irrevocably separated. The translation by Linda Coverdale is superb, and the story illuminates both the nature of friendship and the state of the country. If you"re in the mood for a difficult and soul-destroying read, also try his This Blinding Absence of Light.
Other books with a Moroccan setting-or close connection-include Laila Lalami"s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son; See How Much I Love You by Luis Leante (which limns the deep connection between Spain and its colonies in the Western Sahara); The Serpent"s Daughter, one of Suzanne Arruda"s mysteries (set in 1920) and featuring her regular sleuth Jade del Cameron-this one about a trip to exotic Morocco to reconnect with her mother;Tahir Shah"s In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams; The Spy Wore Silk by Aline, Countess of Romanones; Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir; and Esther Freud"s Hideous Kinky.
NORWAY: THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
If you"ve already read Sigrid Undset"s great trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter (composed of The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross) and want to read more of this n.o.bel Prize- winning writer, you still have ahead of you her other masterpiece, The Master of Hestviken.The four books that make up this series include, in order, The Axe, The Snake Pit, In the Wilderness, and The Son Avenger. And Undset has still others you might also want to try, including Return to the Future, a diary of her escape from Norway after it was invaded by the German army during World War II.
After immersing yourself in medieval Norway, you may want to move right to the more-or-less present, and try these.
The other Norwegian cla.s.sic writer (and n.o.bel winner) is Knut Hamsun. I"d begin with Hunger, but all his books make for good reading.
Karin Fossum writes dark psychological thrillers; if you"re a fan of her fellow Scandinavian Henning Mankell, Fossum is someone to check out. Her novels feature policeman Konrad Sejer, who"s introduced to American readers in Don"t Look Back.
If real noir is to your taste, don"t miss the thrillers written by the prize-winning and mult.i.talented Jo (p.r.o.nounced "Yo") Nesb; he is also a singer and songwriter for the Norwegian rock group Di Derre. Start with The Devil"s Star.
In Out Stealing Horses, award-winning writer Per Petterson"s style is spare and restrained, with a plot that emerges only gradually, and the deliberate pace of the language may force you to read more slowly than usual. From the evocative cover (of the hardback edition) to its exploration of death, grief, forgiveness, and love, this is a novel not to miss. So take a deep breath, settle back in a comfortable chair, and prepare yourself for a beautifully translated, transporting novel about a man reliving his life, especially one particular summer day more than fifty years before. It began when his best friend, Jon, came by with a plan to borrow a neighbor"s horses and ended with the realization that nothing would ever be the same, for him or, especially, for Jon, again. If you enjoy this, try Petterson"s other novels, including To Siberia and In the Wake.
Linn Ullman"s Before You Sleep is the story of the tumultuous Blom family; it"s set in both Norway and New York. (The author is the daughter of actress Liv Ullman and director Ingmar Bergman, which is an interesting backstory in its own right.) Morten Ramsland"s Doghead is the Norwegian version of the dysfunctional family novel (although the author"s actually Danish). It"s set over a period of three generations and is funny, outrageous, and moving-imagine a John Irving novel set in northern Europe.
For a lighter read, try Robert Barnard"s mystery The Cherry Blossom Corpse, set at a romance writers" convention in Bergen. It"s one of the series featuring Perry Trethowan of Scotland Yard, and it"s rife with satire.
And d.i.c.k Francis, one of my favorite mystery writers, set Slay Ride in the world of Norway"s horseracing community.
Although Nicola Griffith"s The Blue Place-a combination of mystery and love story-takes place only partially in Norway, it manages to bring the country to life for us.
Maybe one of the most enticing nonfiction books I"ve read about this Scandinavian country is Paul Watkins"s Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey Through the Mountains of Norway-it just made me want to be there with him.
OCEANIA, OR MILES OF ISLES.
Frankly, the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think about islands is the chapter in A. A. Milne"s Winnie-the-Pooh in which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water. However, the isles I"m talking about here include, but aren"t necessarily limited to, the following South Sea Islands:Vanuatu, Kirabati, Fiji, Christmas, Pitcairn, Polynesia, Solomon, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and Easter Island.
Some are better known than others: For example, Pitcairn Island is probably familiar to most of us because of Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall"s Mutiny on the Bounty, which tells in exciting detail the story of Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian. (In fact, Pitcairn is populated by descendants of the mutineers on HMS Bounty.) Another interesting look at the topic is The Bounty Mutiny by Edward Christian, which includes Bligh"s defense, records from the trial, and much more. But maybe the best book to read is the always reliable Caroline Alexander"s The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. (Mystery fans who want a whole other take on Fletcher Christian and the mutiny should definitely read Val McDermid"s The Grave Tattoo.) And then there"s Easter Island, which was Thor Heyerdahl"s ultimate goal on his great trip by raft from Peru. He made the journey in order to prove that there could be a connection between peoples from Polynesia and South America. He tells the story of the voyage in Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft.
But many of the islands are a bit less familiar to most of us, so take a look at these: J. Maarten Troost"s Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu is an anecdotal (and frequently hilarious) account of the year he spent with his wife, Sylvia, living on the South Pacific islands of his book"s t.i.tle. I found Troost to be delightful company. He"s eminently curious, open to new experiences without being foolhardy (most of the time, anyway), and entirely without pretension. Whenever I read the sort of armchair travel book in which first-world authors spend time in third-world locales, I am always on the lookout for any signs of looking down on, or making fun of, the native populations. Troost is entirely respectful (even when he"s describing how corrupt the government is), saving his harshest criticisms for his own fears, inadequacies, and dumb decisions-all of which just made him seem more human to me.Whether it"s traversing (or trying to) the mud-slick, unpaved roads of the islands; coping with landslides; encountering active volcanoes; discovering giant centipedes seemingly bent on household domination; musing on the pros and cons of cannibalism (while visiting a village in which the last incidence of this practice took place within living memory); surviving Cyclone Paula; or trying out kava, Vanuatu"s intoxicating drink of choice, Troost"s writing is lively and entertaining.When I finished this book I was sorely tempted to spend my next vacation in Vanuatu and Fiji, but reason belatedly kicked in and I realized that I would probably need to bring Troost himself along as well in order to guarantee myself a good time.
Troost is also the author of Lost on Planet China: One Man"s Attempt to Understand the World"s Most Mystifying Nation and The s.e.x Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific. What I"ve discovered in talking to fans of Troost is that their favorite book of his tends to be the first one they read, a fact that"s certainly true for me-my first was Getting Stoned with Savages, and it remains my favorite.
Arthur Grimble was a British diplomat who was made Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony in 1926. His two books, We Chose the Islands: A Six-Year Adventure in the Gilberts and Return to the Islands, are about his family"s experiences on a set of islands that straddle the equator. Let me just note, I felt more than a little sorry for his wife, despite the fact that Mr. Grimble seemed like a nice enough chap-you had to have a certain quality to be the wife of someone in the British diplomatic service during the heyday of the Empire. Incidentally, you won"t find the Gilbert Islands on a recent map-they"re now known as the Republic of Kiribati.
The components of Nicholas Drayson"s Confessing a Murder include a former (fictional) cla.s.smate of Charles Darwin, a mysterious scarab, and a marooned man: together they"re perfect ingredients for a novel to enjoy, and Drayson does it up beautifully.
And these as well:Alexander Frater"s Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics James Michener"s Tales of the South Pacific, set on the New Hebrides during World War II, is my favorite of all the books he ever wrote; one of the stories in it was the inspiration for Until They Sail, one of my best-loved movies.
Charles Montgomery"s The Shark G.o.d: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific Ronald Wright"s Henderson"s Spear is one of those novels that never got the acclaim it deserved when it was originally published, so read it now!
OHIOANA.
Since I spent so much time in 2008 working as a consultant for the Cuyahoga County Public Library, I now consider myself an honorary Ohioan. This, I hasten to tell you, is despite the fact that I graduated from the University of Michigan, a sworn enemy to Ohio State. Oh, those yearly football games! I would actually watch them without a book in hand.
As I think about the books I"ve read that are set in Ohio, or are written by Ohio authors, these come to mind: Ruth McKenney"s Industrial Valley is based around the first wide-scale sit-down strike in labor history-at three tire plants in Akron in the early 1930s. McKenney"s depictions of cla.s.s conflicts at a time when the country was just coming out of the Great Depression are heartfelt and moving. She clearly had an agenda while writing this novel, but I felt that her novel transcended its message. It"s a bit ironic that McKenney is probably best known not for this novel, or for Jake Home (the story of a labor organizer), but rather for My Sister Eileen, a collection of autobiographical stories, originally published in The New Yorker, about the adventures of two sisters who move from Ohio to Greenwich Village.
All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House by David Giffels is the story of how a columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal (and former writer for Beavis and b.u.t.t-Head) and his wife restored an old, more-than-a-little-decrepit house that was once owned by a rubber baron. This is more than a do-it-yourself memoir; rather, it"s a paean to his hometown.
Crooked River Burning takes place against the backdrop of Cleveland"s descent from a major industrial city in the 1940s to a symbol of urban failure by the last decades of the twentieth century. Mark Winegardner interweaves the story of an on-again, off-again years-long relationship between an upper-cla.s.s girl and her lower-cla.s.s boyfriend with chapters about major Cleveland movers and shakers, from disc jockey Alan Freed to Carl Stokes, the city"s first black mayor.
The Broom of the System was David Foster Wallace"s first novel. It"s set in a recognizable but clearly not real Cleveland and is marked by Wallace"s inventive use of plot, characters, and language. (One of its major characters is a c.o.c.katiel named Vlad the Impaler.) When I was reading Don Robertson"s The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, I found myself alternating between laughter and tears, and I knew I would never forget the young hero, nine-year-old Morris Bird III (whom some cla.s.smates unkindly call Morris Bird the t.u.r.d). One autumn day in 1944 he walks across Cleveland to visit his best friend, Stanley Chaloupka. He sets off with an alarm clock, a jar of Peter Pan peanut b.u.t.ter, a map, a compa.s.s, a dollar and some change, and (most reluctantly) his six-year-old sister, Sandra. Along the way he gets delayed by a cigarette riot and Sandra"s whining insistence that she be allowed to play a game of jacks. He also dropkicks a football into a coal wagon (much to the annoyance of the football"s young owners), is rescued by Miss Edna Daphne Frost, and eventually, as the afternoon winds down, Morris and Sandra collide with history. They arrive at Stanley"s block at the exact moment when above-ground gas tanks belonging to the East Ohio Gas Company explode. (The explosion and subsequent fire would kill over one hundred people and destroy a full square mile of Cleveland"s east side.) I loved this slim novel when it was first published in the early "60s; I am just thrilled that a whole new generation of readers is now going to get to read it, too.
OXFORD.
I think I fell in love with Oxford the first time I read Dorothy Sayers"s Gaudy Night way back when I was in college; I"ve never fallen out of love with the city (or that novel). Even a "real life" visit didn"t dim my ardor. And judging by the number of books that evoke the spirit and sense of the place that Matthew Arnold called "that sweet city with her dreaming spires," I"m not alone.You have a wide choice in reading here-nonfiction, mysteries, and literary fiction about the place abound. Here are some that I"ve particularly enjoyed.
Nonfiction.
Two good places to begin to get an overview of the city are The Oxford Book of Oxford, edited by Jan Morris, and David Horan"s Oxford: A Cultural and Literary Companion. Both are filled with good bits of history and lively anecdotes. Horan"s is loosely arranged by the many well-known people whose lives touched the city or the colleges-from Charles I, who holed up in Christ Church (the largest of all Oxford Colleges) when he was trying to escape from Parliament, to the novelist John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps) and n.o.bel Prize-winner William Golding (Lord of the Flies), who were both Brasenose lads.Ved Mehta"s Up at Oxford is one of the author"s series of memoirs, and, I think, his best. It"s a splendid picture of Oxford in the 1950s, told in Mehta"s unique voice.Then there"s Justin Cartwright"s Oxford Revisited, in which the novelist looks back on his student years there.
Mysteries.
Guillermo Martinez"s The Oxford Murders (one of those cerebral puzzles that always make me wish I were smarter than I am); The September Society by Charles Finch; Colin Dexter"s series featuring the irascible Oxford policeman, Inspector Morse, and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Lewis-two of my favorites are early ones, Last Bus to Woodstock and The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn; and Edmund Crispin"s series of puzzlers featuring Gervase Fen, an Oxford don who keeps stumbling across murders. The Case of the Gilded Fly is one of the best, The Moving Toyshop is my favorite, and The Glimpses of the Moon is a humorous treat. (And there are a few more in the all-too-short series, as well.)
Literary Fiction.
Javier Marias"s All Souls, which begins with "Oxford is, without a doubt, one of the cities of the world where the least work gets done"; Melanie Benjamin"s Alice I Have Been (a well-wrought fictional retelling of Alice"s relationship with Lewis Carroll); the satirical Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm; Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; Philip Larkin"s Jill; Where the Rivers Meet and sequels by John Wain (lots on the town vs. gown division); Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym; and The Temple by Stephen Spender.
But I defy anyone to read Oxford, James (now Jan) Morris"s book, originally published in 1965 and reprinted in 2001, and not want to go there for a long stay, immediately. History, biography, literature: the whole ambiance of the city is engagingly presented.
PARMA.
One of my teachers at St. John"s College recommended The Charterhouse of Parma to me. It took more decades than I care to admit to finally get around to reading it, but I have to say that finally reading Stendhal"s novel was a revelation-it"s a book of love and pa.s.sion in the late nineteenth century in Northern Italy that doesn"t minimize the complications that come along with those feelings. I read the translation by Richard Howard, but probably every reader will have his or her favorite. (Incidentally, it wasn"t until I was writing this section that I realized that I didn"t know what Stendhal"s first name was and learned, via Wikipedia, that Stendhal was a pseudonym for Marie-Henri Beyle.) John Grisham eschewed courtroom thrillers and young lawyers choosing the wrong law firm to join in Playing for Pizza, a captivating novel about Rick Dockery, a pro quarterback who-as a result of having a very bad day on the football field during the AFC championship-goes to play for the Parma Panthers and learns there"s more to Italy than pizza, despite the t.i.tle. In fact, one of the things Rick learns is that it"s important to pace yourself through those multiple-course Italian meals.
PATAGONIA.
Patagonia might someday be its own country but for now it"s partly in Argentina and partly in Chile, in the southern-most parts of both countries. I must warn you that once you start reading about Patagonia it"s hard to stop, because it"s been the scene of such diverse events: for years Butch Ca.s.sidy and the Sundance Kid hid out from the Pinkertons there; rumors abounded that creatures who were well known in prehistoric times were now being glimpsed roaming the wilderness; Welsh and Jewish settlements were common; and gauchos rode to glory on the pampas. Here are the best books I"ve found.
Probably the granddaddy of writers who described their days in Patagonia is W. H. Hudson. (He may be best known for Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest-remember Rima the Bird-girl?-but that takes place in Guyana, not Patagonia.) His Patagonian book-heavy on the bird life there-is Idle Days in Patagonia.
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin is probably the one book every Patagonian traveler takes along with him or her; second choice, not far behind, is Paul Theroux"s The Old Patagonian Express. (Incidentally, if Chatwin"s life interests you, don"t neglect Bruce Chatwin: A Biography by Nicholas Shakespeare.) Speaking (even parenthetically) of Nicholas Shakespeare, in his introduction to the Penguin Cla.s.sics edition of Chatwin"s In Patagonia, he has this to say: "In Patagonia, the isolation makes it easy to exaggerate the person you are: the drinker drinks; the devout prays; the lonely grows lonelier; sometimes fatally." I don"t know, but it doesn"t seem a far leap to imagine that Robert Kull had the same sort of notion in mind when he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the effects of deep wilderness solitude on a human being. His research resulted in Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness, a book that is a lesson to anyone who thinks that being alone with one"s thoughts for an extended period is in any way easy.
Nick Reding"s The Last Cowboys at the End of the World: The Story of the Gauchos of Patagonia convinced me that the world is not quite as tamed as most people think it to be-there are still unusual lives to be lived, and unusual places to live them.
There"s also a gripping section in Michael Novacek"s Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Ancient Mammals from Montana to Mongolia about hunting for whale fossils in Patagonia.
For fiction (and there"s not a lot available), try Richard Llewellyn"s sequels to How Green Was My Valley: Up, into the Singing Mountain, and Down Where the Moon Is Small (sometimes called And I Shall Sleep . . . Down Where the Moon Is Small), both about his hero Huw"s life in Argentinian Patagonia.
PEACE CORPS MEMORIES.
In the fall of 1960, at a speech at the University of Michigan, President John F. Kennedy outlined his ideas for what would shortly become the Peace Corps. Little did anyone realize at the time that one unexpected outcome of the project would be a lot of good reading, in the form of memoirs by former Peace Corps volunteers. Here are some I"d recommend.
Jeanne D"Haem"s The Last Camel: True Stories of Somalia Sarah Erdman"s Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village (Ivory Coast) Susana Herrera"s Mango Elephants in the Sun: How Life in an African Village Let Me Be in My Skin (Northern Cameroon) Peter Hessler"s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (China, of course) Kris Holloway"s Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali (more fully described in the "Timbuktu and Beyond" section) Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery"s Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean (letters between two college friends, written when one was in Kenya [Kate] and one was trying to make a life in Manhattan [Hilary]) George Packer"s The Village of Waiting (Togo, West Africa) Josh Swiller"s The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa tells of his experiences as a deaf Peace Corps volunteer in an out-of-the-way village in Zambia.
Moritz Thomsen"s Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle was one of the first published accounts by a Peace Corps volunteer; it remains one of the best. And, if you"re going to just read one book on the topic, make it this one. It"s realistic, painful, and somehow enn.o.bling in its descriptions of Peace Corps life in Ecuador. There"s another superb book of Thomsen"s described in the "Brazil" section.
Mike Tidwell"s The Ponds of Kalambayi (Zaire) Tom Bissell hasn"t written what could be called a memoir of his experiences as a PCV in Central Asia, but it"s certainly informed several of his other books, including Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia and G.o.d Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories.
PERU(SING) PERU.
When you think of Peru, probably the first thing that comes to mind is Machu Picchu, one of the last strongholds of the Incan Empire in the sixteenth century. Present-day travelers to Peru may want to read about the history of Peru but should also take a look at contemporary works. Here are some suggestions for both.
Of the three major histories of the Spanish conquest of Peru (William Prescott"s History of the Conquest of Peru, originally published in 1847; John Hemming"s The Conquest of the Incas, which came out in 1970; and Kim MacQuarrie"s The Last Days of the Incas, published in 2007), Prescott"s is magisterial and weighty, Hemming"s is considered by many the definitive contemporary account, and MacQuarrie"s is eminently readable.
Yet another cla.s.sic is Yale explorer Hiram Bingham"s Lost City of the Incas. (He"s often considered to be the basis for the fictional explorer/adventurer Indiana Jones.) Although there"s an ongoing kerfuffle over Bingham"s exact role in "discovering" Machu Picchu, and there"s a lawsuit in place to force Yale to return the artifacts that Bingham brought home, we shouldn"t let that stop us from reading his accounts of the country whose history he loved.
The newest biography of Bingham is Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu by Christopher Heaney.
Hugh Thomson is a great storyteller, and his book The White Rock is a perfect mixture of history, geography, and sightseeing in the Peruvian Andes, framed around a search for the lost Inca city of Llactapata. And you can"t do better than his A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru, which considers what"s changed and what"s remained mostly the same in the five or so centuries since the end of the Incan empire.
Take a look at these, too: Tobias Schneebaum"s Keep the River on Your Right and Dervla Murphy"s Eight Feet in the Andes: Travels with a Mule in Unknown Peru, in which the unfaltering traveler leaves her home in Ireland for a trip to South America, accompanied by her daughter and the animal mentioned in the t.i.tle.
Novels by non-Peruvians that illuminate Peruvian history and culture include Thornton Wilder"s cla.s.sic The Bridge of San Luis Rey; Ruthanne Lum McCunn"s G.o.d of Luck (about a little-known historical event-the kidnapping, between 1840 and 1875, of close to a million Chinese men who were then sold into slavery in South America); The Vision of Elena Silves by Nicholas Shakespeare; To the Last City by Colin Thubron, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and takes place in the ruins of an Inca city in Peru; and Henry Shukman"s The Lost City.
Good reads by Peruvian writers include: Daniel Alarcon"s fiction-both his novel Lost City Radio and War By Candlelight , a collection of stories-and Jose Maria Arguedas"s autobiographical Deep Rivers (with a terrific translation by Frances Horning Barraclough that won the 1978 Translation Center Award from Columbia University).
PHILADELPHIA.
When I started to think about which of my favorite novels take place in the City of Brotherly Love, I discovered that they generally fell into two groups: mysteries/thrillers and sports.
Here are the mysteries/thrillers: I have recently become addicted to Jane Haddam"s books, which are all set in an Armenian American section of Philadelphia and feature retired FBI agent Gregor Demarkian. Once I read 2009"s Living Witness, I went back and avidly read twenty-two or so that I had unaccountably missed. Haddam"s books aren"t for thriller readers looking for adrenaline-charged page-turners; they"re truly character-driven, deliciously slow-paced, and intricately plotted. Although events in Gregor"s personal life change and develop over the course of the two dozen books, I don"t think it"s necessary to read them in order. (The earliest ones are a bear to find.) Two other recent entries in the series that I"d highly recommend are The Headmaster"s Wife and Cheating at Solitaire.