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BEST TRAVEL BOOKS

The 69 Greatest Travel Books, Fiction

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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• PRINT

Conde Nast Traveler November 2008, Nominated by a literary all-star jury including Pico Iyer and Alexander McCall Smith

Item . Buy these 67 items as a set for $844 including shipping, 25% off the retail price.
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Absurdistan

by Gary Shteyngart

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 333 PAGES

Shteyngart, a young Russian immigrant himself, riffs on the privilege and behavior of the new breed of Russian oligarchs along with many more less politically correct targets in this outrageous first novel set in the Bronx, St. Petersburg and oil-besotted Absurdsvani. (RUS321, $15.00)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

• LITERATURE
• 1985
• PAPER
• 336 PAGES

An enormously influential American book, Twain's masterpiece of boyhood adventure is as much about America's growing pains as it is about Huck's coming of age. (USS41, $8.00)

Clea

by Lawrence Durrell

• LITERATURE
• 1993
• PAPER
• 288 PAGES

The final book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranean city in the years before WWII. (EGY259, $16.00)

Justine

by Lawrence Durrell

• LITERATURE
• 1977
• PAPER
• 245 PAGES

A richly atmospheric novel set in Alexandria on the brink of World War II. (EGY87, $15.00)

Balthazar

by Lawrence Durrell

• LITERATURE
• 1991
• PAPER
• 256 PAGES

The second book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranean city in the years before WWII. (EGY257, $16.00)

Mountolive

by Lawrence Durrell

• LITERATURE
• 1991
• PAPER
• 376 PAGES

The third book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, set in the Mediterranean city in the years before WWII. (EGY258, $16.00)

The Baron in the Trees

by Italo Calvino

• LITERATURE
• 1977
• PAPER
• 228 PAGES

Calvino's fable starts in the 1760s on an Italian estate with a twelve year old nobleman climbing up into a tree to defy an order from his father. There he stays through all the transformation of Italian society. (ITL995, $13.95)

The Big Sleep

by Raymond Chandler

• LITERATURE
• 1998
• PAPER
• 231 PAGES

The classic crime novel from the master of the genre. Here is a journey into the dark underworld of 1930's Los Angeles. (CAL17, $14.00)

Carmen and Other Stories

by Prosper Merimee | Nicholas Jotcham

• LITERATURE
• 1999
• PAPER
• 361 PAGES

A collection of nine stories, including Carmen, memorably set in southern Spain -- and source for the Bizet opera of the same name. (FRN201, $13.95)

Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage and other Stories

by Maria Thomas

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 232 PAGES

A twentieth anniversary edition of the African expatriate author's wry 14 short stories. (EAF163, $12.00)

Cousin Bette

by Honore de Balzac

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 468 PAGES

During the 1840s Paris, a bourgeois family is brought to ruin by the machinations of an embittered spinster. (FRN787, $13.00)

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky | David McDuff

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 647 PAGES

Dostoevsky's thriller of murder and redemption is redolent of St. Petersburg's atmosphere. A cornerstone of Russian literature, and one of the greatest detective stories ever told. (RUS18, $15.00)

The Day of Judgment

by Salvatorre Satta | Patrick Creagh

• LITERATURE
• 1979
• PAPER
• 308 PAGES

Satta's birthplace, Nuoro, Sardinia, features powerfully in this tale of Don Sebastiano and his family at the turn of the last century. (ITL997, $14.00)

Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

• LITERATURE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 191 PAGES

West's two classic short novels, one set in New York and the other in Hollywood, dramatically depict the destructive forces of modern American life. (CAL259, $13.95)

Dead Lagoon, An Aurelio Zen Mystery

by Michael Dibdin

• MYSTERY
• 1995
• PAPER
• 297 PAGES

Dibdin -- a master of ambiguous settings, shady dealings and fast-paced prose -- returns to Venice in this sixth book in the thoroughly enjoyable Aurelio Zen series. (ITL577, $14.95)

Death in Venice and Other Tales

by Thomas Mann

• LITERATURE
• 1999
• PAPER
• 384 PAGES

Neugroschel's fresh translations of Mann's celebrated title tale and 11 other classic stories capture the sensuality of the German original. (ITL996, $12.00)

Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes | Edith Grossman

• LITERATURE
• 2003
• PAPER
• 976 PAGES

Grossman's sparkling new translation brings Quixote's 400-year-old novel into the 21st Century, abandoning the mock-chivalry of earlier translations for lively, uninflected prose. (SPN211, $16.99)

Gilgamesh, A Verse Narrative

by Herbert Mason

• LITERATURE
• 2003
• PAPER
• 128 PAGES

Mason's retelling of the grand, timeless themes of love and death, loss and reparations within the stirring tale of a hero-king and his doomed friend. (IRQ24, $8.95)

Far Tortuga

by Peter Matthiessen

• LITERATURE
• 1988
• PAPER
• 408 PAGES

Matthiessen's pleasurable fifth novel captures the rhythms and allure of life at sea -- and the folklore of the dying Grand Cayman turtle fishery. (CRB236, $18.00)

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

• LITERATURE
• 1997
• PAPER
• 624 PAGES
• FAVORITE

Set in Indira Gandhi's "Emergency Raj" of 1975 in an unnamed Indian "city by the sea," which bears a striking resemblance to Bombay, this tender novel follows the intermingled fortunes of a Parsi widow, her boarder and two tailors. (IDA92, $17.00)

For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway

• LITERATURE
• 1995
• PAPER
• 471 PAGES

Hemingway's great novel about the Spanish Civil War is a love story set during the four-day fight of anti-fascist units in the mountains. (SPN19, $17.00)

Good Morning, Midnight

by Jean Rhys

• LITERATURE
• 1986
• PAPER
• 189 PAGES

A woman returns to Paris after suffering from a bout of depression and alcoholism in London in this feverish modernist classic. (FRN786, $13.95)

A Hazard of New Fortunes

by William Dean Howells

• LITERATURE
• 2001
• PAPER
• 449 PAGES

A self-made millionaire and a social revolutionary are at odds with each other in Howell's novel set against the backdrop of a 19th-century New York streetcar strike. (NYC201, $17.00)

Heart of Darkness, with Congo Diary

by Joseph Conrad

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 136 PAGES

One of the century's most important works, this short story tells of the harrowing journey Marlow takes into the Belgian congo. (AFR46, $10.00)

A High Wind in Jamaica

by Richard Hughes

• LITERATURE
• 1999
• PAPER
• 290 PAGES

The thrilling novel of a group of children who set off to England on a pirate ship after their home in Jamaica is destroyed by a hurricane. (CRB57, $14.95)

Hopscotch

by Julio Cortazar

• LITERATURE
• 1987
• PAPER
• 564 PAGES

When La Maga, his mistress, disappears, Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris, decides to return home to Buenos Aires. (ARG93, $17.00)

A House for Mr. Biswas

by V.S. Naipaul

• LITERATURE
• 2000
• PAPER
• 564 PAGES

Naipaul's comic masterpiece. Described as Dickensian in scope, it tells the story of an outsider struggling to find a place for himself in the complex society of Trinidad. (CRB20, $15.95)

The Inheritance of Loss

by Kiran Desai

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 336 PAGES

Alternating between a once grand household in northern India and the life of the cook's son in New York, this novel by the marvelous and wise Desai skewers the aspirations and reality of both worlds. (IDA303, $14.95)

Journey to the End of the Night

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 453 PAGES

Celine follows his unappealing, uncivilized antihero from the trenches of World War I, to Africa, New York, Detroit and, finally, to Paris in this scathing novel, originally published in 1932. (TVL463, $17.95)

Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 152 PAGES

Yoshimoto's dazzling English-language debut is emotionally complex and sweetly rendered, following an orphaned young woman as she discovers a new family in the home of a fellow student and his mother. (JPN325, $14.00)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

by D. H. Lawrence

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 400 PAGES

Constance Chatterley turns from a sterile marriage to a passionate relationship with a spiritually independent Derbyshire gamekeeper in Lawrence's classic tale of society and sex. (GBR816, $14.00)

Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 896 PAGES

Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Vasily Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of both unimaginable horror and even stranger hope. (RUS299, $24.95)

Little Infamies, Stories

by Panos Karnezis

• LITERATURE
• 2004
• PAPER
• 292 PAGES

In a collection of interconnected stories set in a small Greek village, such characters as the local priest, prostitute, doctor, centaur, and parrot experience passion, humor, and the loss of magic in the face of harsh reality. (GRE359, $18.00)

The Little Sister

by Raymond Chandler

• MYSTERY
• 1988
• PAPER
• 250 PAGES

Marlowe soon discovers that his new case is more complicated than his beautiful and mysterious client had led him to believe, as he becomes entangled in the dangerous and glamorous world of Hollywood filmmaking. (CAL258, $14.00)

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

• LITERATURE
• 1989
• PAPER
• 317 PAGES

Nabokov's brilliant tale includes a marvelously realized portrait of America's motels and byways. (USA335, $15.95)

The Lover

by Marguerite Duras

• LITERATURE
• 1998
• PAPER
• 117 PAGES

A haunting tale of coming-of-age in Indochina during the 1930s, beautifully evoking its setting and the complex emotions of a young girl, her family and her wealthy Chinese lover. (CBD09, $12.00)

Lucy

by Jamaica Kincaid

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 176 PAGES

Kincaid's transporting tale of a young au pair from the West Indies coming of age in New York. (NYC202, $14.00)

The Makioka Sisters

by Tanizaki Junichiro

• LITERATURE
• 1995
• PAPER
• 530 PAGES

The story of a merchant family in prewar Osaka and the struggle of four beautiful sisters to maintain their position in society after the death of their parents, also made into a delightful film by Ichikawa. (JPN41, $16.00)

The Man Without Qualities: Volume I, A Short Introduction and Pseudoreality Prevails

by Robert Musil | Sophie Wilkins | Burton Pike

• LITERATURE
• 1996
• PAPER

The first volume in German author Robert Musil's unfinished epic masterpiece, set just before World War I in Vienna. A former soldier finds himself at the center of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The second volume is also available (AST38). (AST37, $23.00)

The Man Without Qualities: Volume II, Into the Millennium and from the Posthumous Papers

by Robert Musil | Sophie Wilkins | Burton Pike

• LITERATURE
• 1996
• PAPER

The second and final volume in Musil's epic masterpiece. (AST38, $27.50)

The Meadow

by James Galvin

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1993
• PAPER
• 240 PAGES

Galvin's lyrical, personal memoir of ranch life along the Colorado-Wyoming border is rich with beautiful imagery and unforgettable characters. (USW528, $16.00)

Midnight's Children

by Salman Rushdie

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 533 PAGES
• FAVORITE

Crowned Best of the Booker in 2008, Rushdie's greatest novel is a madcap, comic take on the birth of modern India in all its splendid and unexpected manifestations. (IDA12, $16.00)

Money, A Suicide Note

by Martin Amis

• LITERATURE
• 2010
• PAPER
• 256 PAGES

John Self discovers how distasteful the pursuit of pleasure in decadent New York can be. (NYC200, $16.00)

Nadja

by Andre Breton

• LITERATURE
• 1960
• PAPER
• 160 PAGES

Breton combines photographs and stories in this brilliant Parisian Surrealist romance. (FRN785, $14.00)

The Names

by Don DeLillo

• LITERATURE
• 1989
• PAPER
• 339 PAGES

In an expatriate's world of turmoil and danger, American risk analyst James Axton learns of a ritual-murder cult in the Aegean and follows the trail to the ancient city of Lahore. (GRE358, $15.00)

Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard

by Joseph Conrad

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER

In the harbor town of Sulaco in Conrad's fictional country between the Andes and Pacific, a vivid cast of characters play out scenes of corruption and greed. (SAM136, $16.00)

The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel

by Isaac Babel

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 511 PAGES

An authoritative edition of Isaac Babel's powerful short fiction, including his early Red Cavalry Stories and The Odessa Tales. (RUS171, $24.95)

The Odyssey

by Homer | Robert Fagles

• LITERATURE
• 1997
• PAPER
• 541 PAGES

The blind bard's epic in a translation celebrated for its clarity and expressiveness. Take is along for a voyage in Homeric lands and waters. (GRE45, $18.00)

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 417 PAGES

The breathtaking, life-altering, much-celebrated tale of life and love on most everyone's list of the greatest books of all time, ours included. (SAM27, $15.99)

On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 416 PAGES

The original, unedited, rougher, wilder and more provocative 50th anniversary edition of the famed Beat poet's landmark work. (USA16, $17.00)

The Passion

by Jeanette Winterson

• LITERATURE
• 1997
• PAPER
• 176 PAGES

A novel by award winning author Jeanette Winterson, it tells the stories of Henri, a cook to Napoleon, and Villanelle, the daughter of a gondolier. Both are characters driven by their passions -- Henri's is for Napoleon, while Villanelle's is for a beautiful woman. Lyrical, thought provoking, and immensely creative. (FRN148, $14.95)

The Pearl

by John Steinbeck

• LITERATURE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 90 PAGES

A poor fisherman dreams of wealth and happiness for his family when he finds a priceless pearl. (MEX243, $13.00)

The Plague

by Albert Camus

• LITERATURE
• 1991
• PAPER
• 308 PAGES

Chaos prevails when the bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal city of Oran. (NAF64, $14.95)

The Professor's House

by Willa Cather

• LITERATURE
• 1990
• PAPER
• 272 PAGES

Cather's accomplished 1925 novel includes a story-within-a-story of explorer Tom Outland, a character modeled after Richard Wetherill, the discoverer of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. (SWU258, $15.00)

Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville

• LITERATURE
• 1996
• HARD COVER
• 1437 PAGES

This Library of America edition includes all three of Melville's great novels of adventures at sea. (USE463, $40.00)

The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolano

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 648 PAGES

Chronicles the strange journey of two Latin American poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, as seen through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. (WLD158, $16.00)

The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

• LITERATURE
• 2005
• PAPER
• 313 PAGES

Bowles' most famous work, by turns stark and transcendent, is a tale of three people whose lives unravel in the desert of North Africa. Originally published in 1949. (NAF09, $14.99)

The Shipping News

by E. Annie Proulx

• LITERATURE
• 1994
• PAPER
• 337 PAGES

An international bestseller that put Newfoundland on the world stage, this lyrical novel conjures the tough life of a recently divorced journalist struggling to get through the day in a remote fishing town. (NFL03, $16.00)

Snow Country

by Edward G. Seidensticker | Yasunari Kawabata

• LITERATURE
• 1996
• PAPER
• 175 PAGES

A lyrical, moving novel about the affair between a Tokyo businessman and a geisha, set at a spa in the mountains. The author won the Nobel Prize. (JPN40, $15.00)

A Sport and a Pastime

by James Salter

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 136 PAGES

Salter chronicles the arc of a love affair between a young college dropout and his rural French girlfriend on a road-trip across the French countryside. (FRN788, $14.00)

Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

• LITERATURE
• 1995
• PAPER
• 471 PAGES

In McCarthy's indelible fourth novel Cornelius Suttree renounces his prominent Knoxville family to live in a houseboat on the banks of the Tennessee River. (USE464, $15.95)

Texaco

by Patrick Chamoiseau

• LITERATURE
• 1995
• PAPER
• 401 PAGES

Chamoiseau's prize-winning novel weaves a mythic, picaresque history of his native Martinique and its Creole culture that centers around the narrator, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, and the inhabitants of the Texaco shantytown. (CRB237, $15.95)

Ulysses, The Gabler Edition

by James Joyce

• LITERATURE
• 1986
• PAPER
• 649 PAGES

This landmark work in the history of literature is by turns a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a reimagining of Homer's Odyssey, and a dazzling tour of turn-of-the-century Dublin. (IRE131, $21.00)

Whiteman

by Tony D'Souza

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 279 PAGES

D'Souza captures the rhythms and atmosphere of village life on the Ivory Coast in this tale of a relief worker who refuses to leave as tensions build between Muslims and Christians. (WAF129, $13.00)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

by Haruki Murakami | Jay Rubin

• LITERATURE
• 1998
• PAPER
• 607 PAGES

Murakami's most ambitious novel to date deals with, among other things, the scars of nationalism. (JPN107, $16.95)

A Woman in Jerusalem

by Abraham B. Yehoshua

• LITERATURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 237 PAGES

Assigned the difficult task of identifying and burying the victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, a human resources representative reluctantly pieces together the woman's past as a former Soviet engineer and a non-Jewish person on a religious pilgrimage. (ISR69, $14.00)

Zeno's Conscience

by Italo Svevo

• LITERATURE
• 2003
• PAPER
• 464 PAGES

William Weaver's deft translation of Italo Svevo's charming and splendidly idiosyncratic comic novel, the confessions of a hilariously deluded, hyperactive Trieste businessman. (ITL998, $16.95)

 

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