Here are several series of books that are absolutely perfect for armchair (or, I suppose, real) travelers, almost no matter where you plan to go.
Best Travel Writing (annual) Cities of the Imagination series (real cities, not imaginary ones, including Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and Venice, among others) Crown Journeys series (various and sundry authors discuss a city that they love) The Penguin Travel and Adventure series, which includes ninety-six books published between 1936 and 1959-they"re all easy to identify because of their cherry-pink covers. (They"re far easier to identify in theory than to actually find.) The Travelers" Tales series The Vintage Departures series (I"ve never read one of these that I didn"t enjoy.) The WPA Guides (published in the "30s and "40s) SHELTERING IN THE SHETLANDS.
If you want peace and quiet, the Shetland Islands, located about a hundred miles off the northern tip of Scotland, would seem like a perfect destination. But wait-these sea-swept and spa.r.s.ely populated islands turn out to be a primo place to set a mystery. In fact, the majority of books I"ve most enjoyed that are set in the Scottish Shetlands happen to be-you guessed it-mysteries.
So wait for a rainy night and curl up with these-you won"t regret it.
S. J. Bolton"s first novel, Sacrifice, is creepy and riveting, with a strong and appealing heroine. Bolton"s second, which I also enjoyed immensely (despite its own particular brand of creepiness), is Awakening, which takes place in a village in Dorset, England.
Ann Cleeves"s Shetland Quartet explores murder most foul, with detective Jimmy Perez investigating. It includes Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning.
For fans of real-life mysteries, there"s also a chapter on the Shetland Islands in Joanna Kavenna"s The Ice Museum: To Shetland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland, and Svalbard in Search of the Lost Land of Thule (sometimes just subt.i.tled In Search of the Lost Land of Thule) that explores just where (and what) the Greek explorer Pytheas, traveling in the fourth century B.C.E., actually was describing when he claimed he found a totally new land some six days (by sail) from Scotland.
SIBERIAN CHILLS.
Books about Siberia are almost inevitably going to at least touch on its reputation as Stalin"s dumping ground for perceived political enemies and common criminals. But as you will see from the list that follows, each of the authors felt that there was much else to appreciate about the eastern portion of Russia.
Colin Thubron"s In Siberia allows readers to accompany the author on his journey across this enormous and enormously mysterious land, from Mongolia to the Arctic Circle, via car, boat, train, bus, and on foot. He takes us to the town where Rasputin was born, the place where the Czar and his family were brutally murdered, and the old Russian prison camps in the Gulag, as well as to museums, private homes, old hotels, and schools. Reading it is a good way to understand Russia after the fall of communism.
In With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows, Sandra Kalniete recalls a life that encompa.s.sed growing up in Siberia as the daughter of political prisoners, being allowed at last to move back to Latvia, becoming Latvia"s Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2002, and then, in 2004, being appointed the first Latvian Commissioner of the European Union. It"s a memoir that makes everything seem possible.
There"s a great section in Canadian Colin Angus"s Beyond the Horizon about experiencing Siberia by bicycle. I have to confess that when I first saw the cover, I thought I had somehow picked up the wrong book. It looked so much like a science fiction novel, and reading the small print on the jacket-"A gripping story of danger, betrayal, and triumph"-confirmed that suspicion. Then I stared at the cover a little longer, shook my head in wonder, opened the book and started reading, and discovered an amazing (true) story. Angus, an experienced outdoor adventurer, decided to do what no one had done before (although a bit of Googling revealed that two other men were attempting it as well): he was determined to circle the world using human power alone. Here"s how he describes the plan that he and his travel partner,Tim Harvey, came up with: We would start on bicycle, heading north from Vancouver to Fairbanks, Alaska, where the roads ended. We would continue by rowboat down the Yukon River and then 400 kilometers (250 miles) across the Bering Sea to Siberia. We would trek or ski 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) of subarctic steppe until we hit the far eastern limit of the European road system, which, again on bicycle, we would follow westward to Portugal. From there, we would row across the Atlantic Ocean to North American sh.o.r.es, and then cycle the final leg back to Vancouver. We hoped to complete the 42,000 kilometers (26,000 miles) in less than two years.
Naturally, nothing went smoothly, from a kidney infection that required Angus to abandon the trip and fly home to Canada for surgery, to interpersonal issues that caused him to end his travels with Harvey, as well as financial difficulties, and, of course, weather at sea and on land. And the cover image turned out to be Angus, dressed for his Siberian trek.
When she was in her seventies, Dervla Murphy forsook long bike journeys to take a slow train through Siberia, from Moscow to Vladivostok, which she describes in Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals. This was actually her second trip there; her first was recorded in Through Siberia by Accident.
Other Siberian true tales include these: Benson Bobrick"s East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia (probably the best history you"ll find); Ian Frazier"s Travels in Siberia; Mark Jenkins"s Off the Map: Bicycling Across Siberia; George Kennan"s Tent Life in Siberia: An Incredible Account of Siberian Adventure, Travel, and Survival (originally written in the 1860s and still a breathtaking read); Nikolai Maslov"s Siberia (a graphic novel); Peter Matthiessen"s Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia (with photographs by Boyd Norton); Jeffrey Tayler"s River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia"s Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny; Peter Thomson"s Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal (former NPR environmental reporter quits job and travels to the other side of the world); and Piers Vitebsky"s The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia.
As for fiction, try these: Amy Bloom"s Away; Lionel Davidson"s Kolymsky Heights; Fyodor Dostoyevsky"s The House of the Dead (obviously one of the less well-known novels by the great Russian writer but still necessary reading for fans); Clair Huffaker"s The Cowboy and the Cossack (if there is only one out of print book that should be reissued by some publisher, somewhere, it would be this brilliant novel); Stuart Kaminsky"s A Cold Red Sunrise, Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express, and People Who Walk in Darkness are novels of a long-running series featuring one-legged Russian policeman Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov-in these outings, the good cop is dispatched to Siberia to uncover some evil doings; James Meek"s The People"s Act of Love; Martin Cruz Smith"s Polar Star (one of the series that began with Gorky Park); and Alexander Solzhenitsyn"s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
SICILY.
If you are wondering where to spend a vacation, you will have no doubts as to the benefits of flying to Sicily immediately after reading Sicilian Odyssey by Francine Prose. She describes-in luminous prose-just how important the country was in myth, legend, and history. I hadn"t known, for example, that Daedalus, after watching his son Icarus fly too near the sun and thus have his wax wings melted, retired to Sicily to nurse his sorrow at the death of his son.
Other nonfiction about Sicily includes Norman Lewis"s cla.s.sic In Sicily;Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb; Matthew Fort"s Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons (a particularly good choice for foodies); and for travelers interested in the history of a region, Nancy Goldstone"s totally readable The Lady Queen:The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily.
Probably the cla.s.sic Sicilian novel is The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, although when it was first written in 1988, it was deemed unpublishable. Set in 1860, when the unification of Italy was underway, the novel is the story of an astronomer who watches the dissolution of his world with the emotional distance of a scientist charting the night sky.The translation by Archibald Colquhoun is splendid. One of the most quoted lines from the novel (which I"ve found applicable to all sorts of situations) is, "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
Other novels set in Sicily include Andrea Camilleri"s The Shape of Water, the first of a mystery series featuring Police Inspector Salvo Montalbano, each one marked by a series of eccentric characters and a tangible sense of the country (at my last count, there were ten novels in the series-the most recent is The Wings of the Sphinx); Leonardo Sciascia"s The Wine-Dark Sea; Mary Taylor Simeti"s On Persephone"s Island: A Sicilian Journal; and The Almond Picker by Simonetta Agnello Hornby. One of the most amusing novels set here is Sicilian Tragedee, a loose-on many levels-retelling of Romeo and Juliet by Ottavio Cappellani, with a fine colloquial translation by Frederika Randall.
SO WE/I BOUGHT (OR BUILT) A HOUSE IN . . .
I don"t know anyone who at one time or another hasn"t dreamed of chucking it all: leaving, say, Ithaca, Tulsa, Ann Arbor, or Bozeman; and making a new life, with a new house, in, for example, rural France, Italy, England, Ireland, Spain, or Greece. Or acquiring a yurt in a small but charming Tibetan village. It doesn"t really matter where as long as it"s Away. And anywhere that you might want to hang your hat, there"s a good chance someone has already been there, done that, and met all the quirky neighbors.
So if you"re dreaming about decamping and relocating, try these:It seems as though many people who visit Morocco end up falling in love with it and moving there. Australian Suzanna Clarke and her husband bought a riad (a traditional Moroccan house, with a garden in the middle) in Fez (aka Fes-el-Bali), a walled medieval city. The city itself is much less touristy than Rabat, Tangier, or Marrakesh, and for ecotourists it"s totally car free. It"s hard not to want to duplicate the Clarkes" experiences by uprooting yourself and moving as close to them as possible; you can get reasonably close by reading A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco.
Tony Cohan"s On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel Judy Corbett"s Castles in the Air: The Restoration Adventures of Two Young Optimists and a Crumbling Old Mansion Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden"s A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France (the Perigord, in the Dordogne valley in Southwest France) Sally Gable"s Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House (What"s it like to live in a villa designed by famed Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio? Gable tells all. Or nearly.) Barry Golson"s Gringos in Paradise: An American Couple Builds Their Retirement Dream House in a Seaside Village in Mexico (The t.i.tle precludes any annotation I might make.) Martin Kirby"s No Going Back: Journey to Mother"s Garden tells the story of his family (him, his wife, and two very small kids) moving from England to a farmhouse in Northern Spain.
Binka Le Breton"s Where the Road Ends: A Home in the Brazilian Rainforest describes how she and her husband left their successful lives in Washington, D.C., to move to South America and embrace a new dream.
Beverley Nichols"s Merry Hall, Laughter on the Stairs, and Sunlight on the Lawn are only three of his charming books about redoing the house and gardens of several different homes in the British countryside.
Tahir Shah"s The Caliph"s House describes the house his family bought in Morocco, which happened to have a most distinguished history (although it was, in the style of the genre, not in great shape when they bought it).
Niall Williams and Christine Breen"s O Come Ye Back to Ireland (followed by When Summer"s in the Meadow and The Pipes Are Calling) depicts life in County Clare.
SOJOURNS IN SOUTH ASIA.
It may not be politically astute (or correct) to link India and Pakistan in one category, but I"m counting on readers to forgive me for doing so.
For a readable yet authoritative account of the founding of Pakistan and its terrible aftermath, read Yasmin Khan"s The Great Part.i.tion: The Making of India and Pakistan.
Probably the most popular book in the last decade about this area is Greg Mortenson"s Three Cups of Tea: One Man"s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations . . . One School at a Time. The sequel, equally worth your attention, is Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
India.
The Opium Wars of the 1830s are the backdrop for Amitav Ghosh"s vivid and moving Sea of Poppies, which is filled with three-dimensional characters (including Calcutta); it manages the novelistic feat of showing the depredations of colonialism without coming right out and saying it.
Justine Hardy"s In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family in a Changing World takes place against a backdrop of Calcutta and a sea voyage.
John Keay"s The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named is dramatic indeed.
Sudha Koul"s The Tiger Ladies: A Memoir of Kashmir Norman Lewis"s A G.o.ddess in the Stones: Travels in India was published in 1991, but still opens the country up to readers.
Octavio Paz"s In Light of India is a wide-ranging collection of essays based on Paz"s years spent with the Mexican Emba.s.sy there.
Basharat Peer"s Curfewed Night is a memoir of growing up in 1980s Kashmir, and an inside look at the war between India and Pakistan and Hindus and Muslims that raged throughout the 1990s.
Conde Nast Traveler named Ilija Trojanow"s Along the Ganges as one of the all-time top travel books; you"ll understand why when you read it. I felt as though I were there with the author as he makes his way down India"s greatest river.
Indian fiction includes Tarquin Hall"s The Case of the Missing Servant-the first book in a series featuring Vish Puri, "India"s Most Private Investigator"-and the second book, The Man Who Died Laughing; Aravind Adiga"s The White Tiger (winner of the Man Booker Prize) and his collection of stories called Between the a.s.sa.s.sinations;Six Suspects, a most unusual mystery byVikas Swarup (author of Slumdog Millionaire, which was made into an Oscar-winning film);Vikram Chandra"s Sacred Games; Jaspreet Singh"s debut novel, Chef.
Pakistan.
Azhar Abidi"s The House of Bilqis.
Ali Eteraz"s Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan Michael Gruber"s The Good Son, a riveting thriller Mohammed Hanif"s A Case of Exploding Mangoes offers a frenetic, frantic, satirical (and fictional) examination of a momentous event in Pakistani history (the violent death of Pakistan"s leader, General Zia, and several of his closest a.s.sociates in 1988).
Daniyal Mueenuddin"s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders showcases the talent of one of Pakistan"s leading young writers.
Nicholas Schmidle"s To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan is a journalist"s account of his stay in this frightening and beautiful country.
Ali Sethi"s The Wish Maker is a coming-of-age novel set in Lah.o.r.e in the 1990s.
Kamila Shamsie"s novels Kartography and Burnt Shadows SOUTH AFRICA.
For some reason that I can"t quite explain, South Africa has always fascinated me. It might be because one of the first "grown-up" books I remember taking off my parents" bookshelves was Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton"s cla.s.sic novel set in Johannesburg in the 1940s. It was the first book I read that explored the life of black South Africans (though Paton himself was white). I"ve always felt that it"s one of those books that everyone ought to read, and certainly it"s a great choice for book groups.
I"ve never lost my interest in South Africa and its painful history, and I am always eager to see how contemporary writers deal with the many scars of its past. So here are some other excellent selections-fiction and nonfiction, thrillers and literary novels-in which South Africa and/or its history comes to vivid life.
Fiction.
Malla Nunn"s moving A Beautiful Place to Die introduces Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper, who returns to South Africa in 1952 following his service in World War II and has to negotiate the racial laws, the Special Branch of the police, and his own memories in trying to solve the murder of an Afrikaner police officer.
It seems as though thrillers are totally transferrable from one country to the next-the plots of Lee Child"s sterling series starring Jack Reacher could probably take place without too many (or significant) changes to almost any country in the world. But most South African thrillers depend on their plots (or subtexts of their plots) taking place in a country where history"s wounds have never quite healed over. So I can"t imagine that Deon Meyer"s Blood Safari, fast-paced and emotionally nuanced, could be set anywhere else but South Africa.
Achmat Dangor"s Bitter Fruit is aptly named. It"s a chilling novel set during the post-apartheid period, told from the point of the view of a black attorney.
Another novel set during post-apartheid times that reflects the hold of the past on the present is Damon Galgut"s The Good Doctor.
Zakes Mda"s Ways of Dying is about Toloki, who ekes out a meager living as a professional mourner in South Africa. It"s a novel that describes a difficult life in a place that"s filled with violence, and Toloki is a character you won"t soon forget.
For me, the most fascinating sections of Richard Mason"s novel Natural Elements are the ones about the events of the Boer War, presented from a Boer family"s point of view. It"s a perspective that"s often hard to find in historical fiction-indeed, I"ve never read another novel in which the Boers come off so sympathetically.
White South African writers you won"t want to miss are Nadine Gordimer (July"s People is a good one to start with); Christopher Hope (one of the few novels that can be considered even a tiny bit lighthearted is his satire Darkest England, and even that is pretty dark satire); the n.o.bel Prize-winning J. M. Coetzee (I"d begin my reading with Disgrace);Andre Brink"s A Dry White Season; and Lynn Freed"s The Servant"s Quarters.
And for anyone who likes unrelentingly depressing books-and you know who you are-try Roger Smith"s Wake Up Dead.
Nonfiction.
The never-say-die traveler-by-two-wheels Dervla Murphy wrote of her six-thousand-mile solo bicycle odyssey-undertaken when she was in her early sixties-through the nine provinces that comprise the new South Africa, doc.u.menting its ups and downs (many downs, it must be said), in South from the Limpopo.
Martin Meredith"s Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa is an excellent (and very readable) introduction to the complex relationships between the Boers (descendants of the original Dutch settlers in the Cape) and the British, which heated up exponentially as precious metals such as gold and diamonds were discovered in the area.
For more recent history-set during the exciting and hope-generating post-apartheid era and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa-take a look at Bring Me My Machine Gun by Alec Russell, the world news editor of the Financial Times.
Worthy reading can be found in the many memoirs set during the long years of apartheid and after, written by both black and white South Africans. Two of the best are Mark Mathabane"s Kaffir Boy and Rian Malan"s My Traitor"s Heart.
SPAIN.
I feel as though I have a special connection to Spain, even though I"ve never traveled there. My father, when he was in his twenties, went to Spain to join the fight against Franco and fascism in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. So I grew up hearing about his trek across the Pyrenees Mountains to get to Spain from France, tales of lost causes, and stories of the war itself. My father believed that going to fight in Spain was the best thing he had ever done in his life. The veterans of that war are mostly dead now, but as you"ll see from many of the books listed here, though the war ended over sixty years ago, it still lingers in the hearts and minds of Spaniards, no matter which side of the conflict their families fought on.
I"m not sure quite where in Book l.u.s.t To Go Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War belongs. But this dual biography of Julian Bell (nephew of Virginia Woolf) and John Cornford (grandson of Charles Darwin) by William Abrahams and Peter Stansky is so engaging and so redolent of the atmosphere of the 1930s that I had to put it somewhere. In telling the story of these two young men, Abrahams and Stansky also help explain what motivated so many other young men (and women) to leave their everyday lives behind and join the fight against Franco.
The area known as Galicia is the setting of Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain by John Barlow.This mouthwatering book is about both the food and cultural delights of the region.
Spain in Mind: An Anthology is edited by Alice Leccese Powers, who also wrote a useful general introduction and brief bios that introduce each author. It includes shortish essays, fiction, and poetry by an eclectic array of writers, including Somerset Maugham, Andrew Marvell, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, Washington Irving, Rose Macaulay, and many more.
In Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past, Giles Tremlett reflects on how Spain"s turbulent history is still reverberating (loudly) in the present.
Victoria Hislop"s The Return is the story of one family"s complex involvement in the Spanish Civil War. I"ve always felt that fiction is a perfect (and painless) way to learn history-and Hislop"s novel serves to prove my point.
Although Javier Marias is a Spanish writer, several of his best novels take place in Oxford, England (and many of the characters do have a Spanish background). The elegance of his writing (ably translated by Margaret Jull Costa) is a delight. I would begin my reading of Marias with his most ambitious work yet: a trilogy called Your Face Tomorrow, which includes Fever and Spear;Dance and Dream; and Poison, Shadow and Farewell. They need to be read in this order to be best appreciated.
Other books to try include Richard Wright"s nonfiction Pagan Spain, which was originally published in 1957 and only recently reprinted; Bernard Atxaga"s novel The Accordionist"s Son; Roads to Santiago: Detours and Riddles in the Lands and History of Spain by Cees Nooteboom; Spanish Recognitions: The Roads to the Present by Mary Lee Settle (about a journey she took there when she was eighty-two); It"s Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels by Polly Evans; Laurie Lee"s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War; Norman Lewis"s The Tomb in Seville, about a trip to Spain just before the Civil War erupted; Tim Moore"s Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His a.s.s on a Pilgrimage to Santiago (love that t.i.tle);James Michener"s Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections; and Carlos Ruiz Zafon"s novel The Shadow of the Wind, which offers a vivid picture of 1950s Barcelona.
Thriller fans will want to check out Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom and the four mysteries by Robert Wilson that are all set in Seville, starring Inspector Javier Falcon. They include, in order, The Blind Man of Seville, The Vanished Hands, The Hidden a.s.sa.s.sins, and The Ignorance of Blood. Wilson is also the author of many other thrillers, including one set in Spain"s neighbor, Portugal: A Small Death in Lisbon. Manuel Vazquez Montalban"s mysteries normally take place in Barcelona, but his private detective, Pepe Carvalho, takes a working trip to Argentina in The Buenos Aires Quintet.
STAR TREKKERS.
A trek can be undertaken by foot, by boat, by cars, by skis, or (as we know from movies and television) by s.p.a.ce ship, as well as by any other form of transportation. Here are my favorite accounts of untiring, unstoppable trekkers: these are the writers whose books-no matter their topic-are well worth seeking out. Some are more difficult to track down than others, although I was pleasantly surprised that many were readily available at the library, used bookstore, or via the Internet.
I especially wanted to bring Gavin Young (1928-2001) to the attention of readers, since his books are a bit hard to find and they"re so terrific.Young was a British war correspondent and travel writer. His accounts of wandering the world via ships of all sizes, sorts, and shapes include Slow Boats to China, which was published in 1981, and its sequel, Slow Boats Home, which came out in 1985. They"re rich in detail, filled with accounts of the people he meets and the places he visits. They"re the kind of books that make you wish you lived in a time when this kind of travel was still possible (it was even difficult for Young to achieve)-although I"m not sure I could handle with such aplomb the travel delays and the fleas, not to mention the pirates.
And then there"s Sir Richard Burton, who had such an amazing and peripatetic life-indeed, one could almost use the adjective "unbelievable" to describe it. Edward Rice"s biography Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton has a subt.i.tle that sums it up rather nicely, I think: The Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Discovered the Kama Sutra, and Brought the Arabian Nights to the West. If you"d rather read a novel about this fascinating man, try The Collector of Worlds: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton by Iliya Troyanov.
Other star trekkers (in alphabetical order) whose books I recommend without reservation include Gertrude Bell, Isabella Bird, Ian Buruma, Robert Byron, Bruce Chatwin, William Dalrymple, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Peter Fleming, Paul Fussell, Tony Horwitz, Pico Iyer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Alexander William Kinglake, Mary Kingsley, Laurie Lee, Norman Lewis, Jan Morris, Dervla Murphy, Eric Newby, Redmond O"Hanlon, Jonathan Raban, Freya Stark, Paul Theroux, and Sara Wheeler.
SWEDE(N), ISN"T IT?
Another Scandinavian country heard from: here you"ll find the sort of moody mysteries that give you a dark but effective feel for the country, fictional histories of major events, and accounts of Sweden"s role in World War II. What was interesting to me as I was doing all my reading about Sweden is that so many of the books that have been translated into English are for children-Selma Lagerlof, for example, whose The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is much easier to find than are her novels for adults.
Probably the two most popular Swedish writers these days are Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. Mankell is best known for his bleak psychological thrillers, many featuring Kurt Wallander, his main character in a series of police procedurals. A good introduction to that aspect of Mankell"s oeuvre-and a youngish Wallander-is The Pyramid: And Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries.
Non-Wallander novels by Mankell include, but aren"t limited to, The Man from Beijing,Kennedy"s Brain,The Return of the Dancing Master (my favorite), and Italian Shoes.
Larsson"s first novel of the Millennium Trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was an immediate best seller; he followed it up with The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet"s Nest. For his gazillion fans (and his family), it was a sad day when he died much too young right after finishing the last book of the three.
(Both Larsson and Mankell are too dark for me to read comfortably, but I am in the tiniest minority, so try them out for yourself.) Other crime novels to read include Johan Theorin"s Echoes from the Dead; Under the Snow by Kerstin Ekman (as well as her non-mystery novel, G.o.d"s Mercy); Helene Tursten"s Detective Inspector Huss; The Princess of Burundi (and others show-casing Uppsala homicide detective Ann Lindell and her colleagues on the force) by Kjell Eriksson; sa Larsson"s Sun Storm (which won Sweden"s Best First Crime Novel Award), The Blood Spilt, and others; and Sun and Shadow (and others) by ke Edwardson.
For non-mystery fans who still want to get a sense of Sweden, try Lewi"s Journey by Per Olov Enquist, translated by the talented Tiina Nunnally. The ostensible subject-the founding of the Swedish Pentecostal movement-provides the framework for an examination of character, place, and Sweden in the twentieth century. (His other novels, all with a historical framework, take place in other countries: The Book About Blanche and Marie in France, and The Royal Physician"s Visit in Denmark). Others not to miss include Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi (Sweden in the 1960s); Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti; and Astrid and Veronika and Sonata for Miriam by Linda Olsson.
TEXAS TWO-STEP (AFTER A BOB WILLS SONG).