Whether you’re looking for a staycation beach read or inspiration for future world travel plans, look no further than this list of great books about journeys.
From non-fiction travel to new and modern classics of fiction, there’s something to take you away from it all this summer.
1. From the Holy Mountain, by William Dalrymple
Dalrymple began his travel writing career with the critical success of 1989’s In Xanadu. Following the journey related in The Travels of Marco Polo, Dalrymple journeyed from Jerusalem to the former palace of Kublai Khan at Xanadu, in Inner Mongolia.
In his third book, From the Holy Mountain, Dalrymple follows the adventures of two monks, John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist. In AD 587, they embarked on a mission to collect the wisdom of the sages of Eastern Christianity.
The journey takes Dalrymple from a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece through a civil war in Turkey, ruins in Lebanon, the tensions of the West Bank and an uprising in Egypt.
This is a historical travelogue full of contemporary anecdotes and opinion in a book that the Sunday Times called “energetic, thoughtful, curious and courageous.”
2. Aleph, by Paulo Coelho
Coelho is arguably best known for his bestselling 1998 book, The Alchemist, which has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide.
2010’s Aleph, is an autobiographical account of an epiphany Coelho had while travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway in 2006.
Suffering from a crisis of faith, it is on this train journey that he will meet Hilal, a woman he loved – and ultimately betrayed – some 500 years ago.
3. The Odyssey, by Homer
This ancient Greek poem, along with The Iliad, is one of the oldest works of literature still widely read today. Attributed to Homer and divided into 24 books, the story follows Odysseus on his epic 10-year journey home after the Trojan War.
Odysseus survives shipwrecks and battles ancient monsters and the wrath of the gods as he tries to make it back to Ithaca. Meanwhile, his wife is contending with a host of suitors who have taken up residence in her home, presuming Odysseus dead.
4. Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid
The journeys in Hamid’s Exit West are as simple to make as opening and closing a door, but they have far-reaching consequences.
Nadia and Saeed fall in love in an unknown Muslim state besieged by civil war. When rumours reach them of mysterious black doors that open out onto far off lands – and of the men that can be paid to find these doors – the pair contemplate leaving their beloved city, and their families, behind.
When mass migration is as simple as stepping through a door, what will the inhabitants of the cities the refugees arrive in make of their new neighbours?
5. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck’s classic tale of the Joad family escaping the dustbowl of Oklahoma won him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Twenty-two years later he would be awarded the Nobel Prize.
Along with thousands of other “Okies” – refugee farmers and sharecroppers that fled to California at that time – the Joads are seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future, but are met only with hostility and the constant spectre of destitution.
6. The Rings of Saturn, by WG Sebald
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer Jonathan Raban described The Rings of Saturn as “the finest book of long-distance mental travel that I’ve ever read.”
Blurring the line between fiction, memoir, history and travel writing, our narrator sets out on a walk through coastal East Anglia and covers topics as wide-ranging as 17th century English author Thomas Browne, the natural history of the herring, and the Dowager Empress Tz’u-hsi.
7. Underland, by Robert MacFarlane
Awarded the 2019 Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, MacFarlane’s Underland: A Deep Time Journey sees the writer head underground.
From caving in the Mendips and Finland to traversing glacier fields in Greenland, the most captivating and claustrophobic chapter takes place in the narrow and winding catacombs deep beneath Paris.
A sequel of sorts to his previous book The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, MacFarlane continues his search for greater meaning in the footsteps of our ancestors, taking that search from the drove-roads and sea paths of the old ways, deep into the earth itself.
8. The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn
When the author discovers that her husband is terminally ill and the couple loses their home, the pair decide to take the 630-mile journey along the South-West Coast Path, from Somerset, across the north coast of Devon and around the tip of Cornwall, to Dorset.
Walking with only what they can carry on their backs, they face the jagged clifftops and sweeping expanse of sea with determination and enormous courage. What emerges is a life-affirming true story about the power of the natural world and overcoming grief.
9. His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman
The young adult novels of Pullman’s His Dark Materials have found decidedly more grown-up sequels in his yet-to-be-concluded Book of Dust trilogy. The original trilogy – encompassing The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass – have also recently been filmed for the BBC.
The books follow the journeys of Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry as they travel between alternate worlds searching for answers to questions about the mysterious substance Dust. Moving from the fantastical – armoured bears and witch clans – to quantum mechanics, theology and philosophy, this escapist epic deals with the real-world topics of religion and consciousness.
