Reading is the easiest way to experience travel without the actual act of it. Whether it is mysterious islands, fictional cities, time periods or real locations, this list curated by The Bombay Circle Press will help you find authors that use words to transport you in ways that are arguably better than travel.
Landscape, romance, and gluttony:
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and Translated by Lin King
Transport yourself to May 1938, following the young novelist Aoyama Chizuko who sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine, but instead she’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Soon, a Taiwanese woman―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
Venice in different flavours:
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities, the celebrated 1972 work by Italian writer Italo Calvino, stands as a unique and hypnotic fusion of fiction and philosophy that continues to captivate readers worldwide. This novel is structured as a series of luminous vignettes in which imagined cities unfold through dialogue and description. It invites readers to rethink the nature of space, memory, desire and the human experience itself. The essence of travel flows within this book, as explorer Marco Polo chats with conqueror Kublai Khan, describing Venice with different descriptions on each page.
Murder, passion, and the African subcontinent:
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The tranquility of a lovely cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life.
Who is also on board? Christie’s great detective Hercule Poirot is on holiday. He recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Despite the exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems…
An Agatha Christie murder mystery is something one can always read; Hercule Poirot’s exploits, a cruise ride along the Nile, and a murder to solve, all come together to form a concoction one can’t miss.
Loyalty, identity and liberation:
The English Problem by Beena Kamlani
Follow eighteen-year-old Shiv Advani as handpicked by Mahatma Gandhi to study law in England and return as a leader of a liberated India, he leaves home reluctantly—newly and hastily betrothed, a wife he barely knows already carrying their child, and a life laid out for him by duty rather than desire.
London upends everything. Drawn in and repelled in equal measure, Shiv enters a world shaped by the Empire. Its culture, privilege, and seductive freedoms slowly pull him away from the mission he came for as the people Shiv sought to be liberated from become the people he desperately wants to be a part of. As he trains at the Inns of Court and begins to carve out a new life, the distance between his two homes widens. The English Problem is a lyrical, intimate, and politically resonant novel of a young man and a young nation, struggling to define themselves.
There’s a lot to discover in this world, and one person’s narrative put into words can perfectly describe their intricate fabric of travel experience. Interpretations, details and more remain limited, and when a writer’s form and style contributes to one being transported, it creates texts that cannot be ignored.
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