Travel Books That Make You Book a Plane Ticket

Bryson retraces a trip he made through Europe as a young man, 20 years later, and the result is the funniest travel book written in the English language. His ability to articulate the precise experience of being an American abroad in Europe — the confusion, the wonder, the discomfort — is so accurate it feels like memoir even when you've never been anywhere near the places he's describing.

The book that started the genre of "Briton moves to European paradise and learns things about life" — and nothing in that genre has matched the original. Mayle's first year in a 200-year-old Provençal farmhouse is catalogued with the precision of someone who can't believe his luck and the humour of someone who understands that paradise requires plumbing. Every winter you pick it up and want the sun.

Krakauer's reconstruction of Christopher McCandless's fatal journey into the Alaskan wilderness is the most debated travel book of the last 30 years. McCandless was either a romantic fool or a genuine seeker depending on who you ask, and Krakauer lets that ambiguity stand. The wilderness writing is extraordinary; the question it asks about what we're looking for when we go somewhere truly remote is one that stays with you.

Eco's essays about America — the wax museums, the themed motels, the Disneyland where everything is a copy of something that may never have existed in the first place — are the sharpest cultural observations a European has ever made about the country. They're also funny, which Eco's philosophical work usually isn't. A different kind of travel book: one that makes you see somewhere you've been (or lived) with completely new eyes.

Michael Palin's travel books have the virtue of genuine curiosity: he actually wants to know about the people he meets, not just the landscape they're set against. His journey along the Himalayan range — from Pakistan through India, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan to Myanmar — is the most complete picture of that extraordinary stretch of the world that non-specialist readers are likely to find.

A novel rather than travel writing — but one that makes you need to visit Turkey and Armenia immediately. Ohanesian's story of a young man discovering his grandfather's secrets during the Armenian Genocide is a meditation on memory, identity, and the landscape of the eastern Anatolian plateau that is so precisely evoked you can feel the dust. The best introduction to that particular corner of the world in fiction.

Strayed hiked 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, with no wilderness experience, after her mother's death unravelled her life. Her memoir is not a book about hiking — it's a book about what you do when grief makes ordinary life impossible. The landscapes she moves through are rendered with physical precision; the emotional work she does in them is described with rare honesty.

Adelstein spent nearly a decade as the first Western reporter on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, covering the yakuza and the nightlife economy they controlled. His memoir is part crime reporting, part cultural observation, and part thriller — and it's the most vivid portrait of a Tokyo that the tourist industry does not show. You cannot read it without wanting to see the city, differently.

A debut novel set across Italy — ski resorts, university towns, summer landscapes — that uses place so precisely you feel the cold, the particular quality of Italian light, the social texture of specific Italian environments. Giordano won the Premio Strega (Italy's Booker Prize) for it at 26. It makes you want to get on a train and watch the landscape change.

Bryson retraces a trip he made through Europe as a young man, 20 years later, and the result is the funniest travel book written in the English language. His ability to articulate the precise experience of being an American abroad in Europe — the confusion, the wonder, the discomfort — is so accurate it feels like memoir even when you've never been anywhere near the places he's describing.

The book that started the genre of "Briton moves to European paradise and learns things about life" — and nothing in that genre has matched the original. Mayle's first year in a 200-year-old Provençal farmhouse is catalogued with the precision of someone who can't believe his luck and the humour of someone who understands that paradise requires plumbing. Every winter you pick it up and want the sun.

Krakauer's reconstruction of Christopher McCandless's fatal journey into the Alaskan wilderness is the most debated travel book of the last 30 years. McCandless was either a romantic fool or a genuine seeker depending on who you ask, and Krakauer lets that ambiguity stand. The wilderness writing is extraordinary; the question it asks about what we're looking for when we go somewhere truly remote is one that stays with you.

Eco's essays about America — the wax museums, the themed motels, the Disneyland where everything is a copy of something that may never have existed in the first place — are the sharpest cultural observations a European has ever made about the country. They're also funny, which Eco's philosophical work usually isn't. A different kind of travel book: one that makes you see somewhere you've been (or lived) with completely new eyes.

Michael Palin's travel books have the virtue of genuine curiosity: he actually wants to know about the people he meets, not just the landscape they're set against. His journey along the Himalayan range — from Pakistan through India, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan to Myanmar — is the most complete picture of that extraordinary stretch of the world that non-specialist readers are likely to find.

A novel rather than travel writing — but one that makes you need to visit Turkey and Armenia immediately. Ohanesian's story of a young man discovering his grandfather's secrets during the Armenian Genocide is a meditation on memory, identity, and the landscape of the eastern Anatolian plateau that is so precisely evoked you can feel the dust. The best introduction to that particular corner of the world in fiction.

Strayed hiked 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, with no wilderness experience, after her mother's death unravelled her life. Her memoir is not a book about hiking — it's a book about what you do when grief makes ordinary life impossible. The landscapes she moves through are rendered with physical precision; the emotional work she does in them is described with rare honesty.

Adelstein spent nearly a decade as the first Western reporter on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, covering the yakuza and the nightlife economy they controlled. His memoir is part crime reporting, part cultural observation, and part thriller — and it's the most vivid portrait of a Tokyo that the tourist industry does not show. You cannot read it without wanting to see the city, differently.

A debut novel set across Italy — ski resorts, university towns, summer landscapes — that uses place so precisely you feel the cold, the particular quality of Italian light, the social texture of specific Italian environments. Giordano won the Premio Strega (Italy's Booker Prize) for it at 26. It makes you want to get on a train and watch the landscape change.