Book Lust to Go

by Nancy Pearl

  Tim Butcher became obsessed (I don’t think that’s too strong a term) with African explorer H. M. Stanley, and decided to replicate his dangerous 1864 journey mapping the Congo River. In Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart, he not only describes the immediate problems he encounters on his trip (corrupt officials, a war that won’t end, trouble in the adjoining countries that inevitably seeped into the Congo), but also gives the armchair traveler a history of this troubled nation, once known as the Belgian Congo, and now the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  In Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend, Patrick Symmes retraces Che’s 1952 journey over the back roads of South America. While describing his own experiences—several crazily dangerous—Symmes also outlines the political development of one of the twentieth century’s iconic figures.

  Other “In the Footsteps of . . .” books that I’ve enjoyed a lot are In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan by John DeFrancis; One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley by Caroline Alexander (West Africa during the Victorian era); Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes: Going Where Captain Cook Has Boldly Gone Before; The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History by Justin Marozzi; Michael Woods’s In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great; as well as Hal Roth’s We Followed Odysseus and No Man’s Lands: One Man’s Odyssey Through The Odyssey by Scott Huler. (I loved that Huler’s journey was initiated by a book group dedicated to reading James Joyce’s Ulysses.)

  And while Tim Severin’s In Search of Robinson Crusoe is not exactly an “In the Footsteps of . . .” book, it’s the perfect read for fans of Defoe’s novel, which was based (somewhat loosely, we learn) on the adventures of Alexander Selkirk. Another view of the same events can be found in Diana Souhami’s equally engrossing Selkirk’s Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe.

  INDICATIVE OF INDONESIA

  Very few countries have easy births or find their way to adulthood and independence a simple journey, but Indonesia’s was perhaps more difficult than most. Dutch colonization began in the seventeenth century and continued for more than two hundred years, and the area was occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945. After years of negotiation with the Netherlands (and U.N. intervention), the country became independent in 1949, although its first free elections didn’t take place until 1999. It’s now the third-largest democracy in the world, and it also has the world’s largest population of Muslims. It’s composed of 17,508 islands, many sparsely populated.

  Following its independence, the appointment of Sukarno as president, and increasingly authoritarian rule, Indonesia has been plagued by wars both large and small. After a bloody coup in 1965—the best guess is that between five hundred thousand and a million people were killed—Sukarno was deposed and replaced with General Suharto, who headed the military at the time.

  That’s a very brief historical overview that will provide, I hope, the necessary background to get the absolute most out of these marvelous books that I describe here.

  You need to begin your reading of Indonesian literature with the novels of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, especially his Buru Quartet, which is composed of This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, and House of Glass, all ably translated by Max Lane. They’re set in the Dutch East Indies—now called Java (one of the provinces of Indonesia)—and give us a nuanced and powerful picture of colonialism and its discontents. For many years, Toer’s work was banned in Indonesia; in fact, Toer memorized the first two books of the quartet when he was in a prison camp and denied all writing materials.

  Although they’re not particularly current (1981 and 1999, respectively), there are useful chapters about Islam and Indonesia in V. S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers and Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples.

  Twenty-one vignettes make up Rob Goodfellow’s entertaining collection The Green Iguana, all centered around his life as an Australian expat in Bali and Java.

  Sabine Kuegler describes her childhood in the 1980s and ’90s, living among the primitive Fayu peoples of Indonesia with her missionary parents in Child of the Jungle: The True Story of a Girl Caught Between Two Worlds. She paints a memorable picture of a girl growing up in a culture that is totally foreign to most western readers.

  Thriller fans will want to track down Christopher J. Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously, set during 1965, Indonesia’s especially turbulent year. When I was reading this, I felt that I needed glass after glass of something cold—iced tea, Pepsi, water—to counteract the heated atmosphere of the setting. And the movie based on the novel is also terrific. And those who love both magic realism and character-driven novels shouldn’t miss Erick Setiawan’s Of Bees and Mist.

  A memoir of life in the brutal Japanese internment camps during World War II is The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother’s Wartime Courage by Clara Olink Kelly.

  Tash Aw’s brilliant novel Map of the Invisible World takes place in 1965, during a particularly bloody crackdown on Dutch citizens in Sukarno’s Indonesia. His first published work of fiction, The Harmony Silk Factory, provided a strong hint of his talents—and his second book confirms them. So, you read it here first: someday Aw will win a well-deserved Nobel Prize for Literature.

  INSIDE THE INSIDE PASSAGE

  Few journeys give the traveler an immediate sense of the vastness and sheer scale of our planet. The Inside Passage, a thousand-mile trek from Puget Sound up the coast of British Columbia to southeast Alaska, is one of them. Whether you travel by cruise ship, ferry boat, or smaller craft you will be struck by the serene beauty of the channels and islands, as well as the majestic expanse of the unending forests.

  In Passage to Juneau Jonathan Raban follows the journey and journals from Captain George Vancouver’s exploration of the Inside Passage in the 1790s. To me, Raban is always at his best in a sailboat—his quiet observations, interactions with strangers, and evocation of simple pleasures capture what is unique about a boat journey.

  Another small boat journey/memoir that captures the imagination is The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet. The author began exploring British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands with her five children during the 1920s and ’30s.You come away from this story envying their experience, and wishing that all children could have such summer memories.

  Most books about the Inside Passage focus on the journey up to Alaska. The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig starts in Sitka and heads south. Based on an actual incident from 1853, Doig’s novel describes the perilous trip of four indentured servants who escape a Russian work camp in a stolen canoe and manage to paddle over a thousand miles to Astoria, Oregon.

  Another author who evokes the spirit of the Inside Passage is Susan Vreeland; in The Forest Lover she imaginatively re-creates the world of Canadian artist Emily Carr. Carr spent her entire career trying to capture the spirit of the vast forests and native villages of British Columbia in her books and paintings.

  Speaking of vast forests, don’t miss John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, which relates the haunting true story of Grant Hadwin, a logger/activist in the Queen Charlotte Islands who during a bizarre rage destroyed a unique “golden” spruce that had been sacred to the Haida Indians. No other recent story I know evokes the majestic scale of the forests along the coast of British Columbia.

  Many cruise ships end their trips in Haines. For a good picture of what it’s like to live in one of Alaska’s smaller cities, try If You Lived Here I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska and Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friends, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska by Heather Lende.

  Last but not least, what would a journey be without a bit of history amidst a mystery? In The Big Both Ways John Straley creates a picture of the Inside Passage in the mid-1930s, as a restless logger gets mixed up in a murder investigation involving a union organizer on the lam from the cops.

  IRAN

  There’s no way she would remember thi
s conversation, but when I met author Elaine Sciolino in 2000, shortly after her book Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran was published, she urged me to visit the country. Sciolino enthusiastically described the warmth of its citizens, which persisted despite any restrictions their government might impose. It’s been a decade since we met and I’ve yet to go to Iran, except through my readings of these books.

  In To See and See Again, Tara Bahrampour describes her experiences growing up in Iran as the daughter of an Iranian Muslim father and a Jewish American mother. In the wake of the Islamic Revolution the author and her family left the country, and returned some fifteen years later for what would be the first of a number of visits.

  Another excellent memoir is Terence Ward’s Searching for Hassan: A Journey to the Heart of Iran, about an American family, once stationed in Iran, who returns to the country two decades after the revolution to search for the young servant boy they left behind when escaping the turbulence of the uprising.

  After publishing Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi wrote Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, a revealing autobiography that offers readers a much more complete picture of the author than was provided by her first book. I often felt while I was reading it that I was in the presence of someone who was slowly tearing a scab off a wound that was not yet completely healed, leaving it still bleeding and painful; I can only imagine how it felt to be the one doing the tearing. (You can watch my interview with Nafisi, done right after the publication of her second memoir, at www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3030906.)

  For useful information about the country’s often-chaotic history, as well as an analysis of the appeal of extremism, take a look at Robin Wright’s Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam. Wright’s writing is always accessible and a pleasure to read.

  Other nonfiction about Iran includes Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam by Mark Bowden, which is one of the best accounts of the Iran hostage crisis; Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran by Roya Hakakian; Jason Elliott’s Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran; both Neither East Nor West: One Woman’s Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran and A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan by Christiane Bird; In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue, a staff writer covering Iran for the Economist;From a Persian Tea House: Travels in Old Iran by Michael Carroll; Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth—A Memoir of Iran by Iranian-born journalist Camelia Entekhabifard; Ray Takeyh’s Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs; The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran by Hooman Majd, the grandson of one of Iran’s ayatollahs; and We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs by Nasrin Alavi.

  On a slightly lighter note, try Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran, followed by Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran, both by Azadeh Moaveni; and Brian Murphy’s The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet.

  Can an eleventh-century epic help us understand contemporary Iran and Afghanistan? After reading Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah’s Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber, you may conclude, as I did, that the answer is definitely yes.

  As for fiction, there are many wonderful novels set in Iran. Here are some of my favorites.

  Fans of literary fiction will want to check out Gina Nahai’s Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith and Caspian Rain, novels that illuminate life in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran; Jumping Over Fire by Nahid Rachlin; Diane Johnson’s Persian Nights; Dorit Rabinyan’s Persian Brides; Touba and the Meaning of Night by Shahrnush Parsipur; Shahriyar Mandanipur’s Censoring an Iranian Love Story; Houri by Mehrdad Balali; and Dalia Sofer’s The Septembers of Shiraz.

  Thriller fans shouldn’t miss these: Tom Gabbay’s The Tehran Conviction; The Increment by veteran novelist David Ignatius; and Finding Hoseyn by Colin Mackinnon—this last, set during the last days of the Shah, will appeal especially to John le Carré and Daniel Silva readers.

  IRELAND: BEYOND JOYCE, BEHAN, BECKETT, AND SYNGE

  Let’s not start with James Joyce and just say we did, okay? Or, if we must, how about A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man? Or his collection of stories, Dubliners. (I think I should take a course in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake before I include them here.) In fact, let’s just get Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, and John Synge out of the way in this first paragraph. They’re the classic Irish writers, and no more need be said. In any event, there are plenty of other books to read before venturing to the Ould Sod.

  Does anyone read J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man any more? I certainly hope so, because it’s probably one of the funniest, raciest, and most outrageous novels you’ll ever encounter. Donleavy, an Irish American, moved to Ireland permanently after World War II. His Ireland: In All Her Sins and in Some of Her Graces is partly an autobiography and partly a tribute to his adopted country and a way of life no longer to be found. So, in honor of Donleavy, hoist a pint of Guinness stout and have a look.

  William Trevor is the perfect writer for those readers who savor the language of a book, who read slowly to hear the words unspool in their minds.You can’t go wrong with any book by him—they’re all beautiful and sad—but I thought Love and Summer, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, was one of his best. Other novels to try are the Whitbread Award-winning Fools of Fortune and The Story of Lucy Gault, which was shortlisted for both the Man Booker and the Whitbread Award. His short story collection Cheating at Canasta would be a fine introduction to his style, subjects, and way of looking at the world.

  Nuala O’Faolain’s memoir Are You Somebody?:The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman offers an insightful (and painfully honest) portrait of growing up female in a society that’s often hostile to women struggling for self-identity.And her novel My Dream of You incorporates Irish history and mores into its plot.

  Travel writer David Yeadon’s At the Edge of Ireland: Seasons on the Beara Peninsula portrays the beauty of this out-of-the-way, relatively nontouristy section in the southwest of the country.

  And grab a handful of these novels to read: Edward Rutherfurd’s The Princes of Ireland and The Rebels of Ireland (as might be guessed by the titles, these are historical novels); Frank Delaney’s series of novels that consider Ireland’s experiences in the twentieth century,such as Ireland,Tipperary, Shannon,and Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show; Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts of Belfast (an unrelenting thriller); Booker Prize-winner Sebastian Barry’s novels, including The Secret Scripture; Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends and The Scarlet Feather;The Best of Frank O’Connor, which offers a sampling of this fine writer’s fiction and nonfiction; Anne Enright’s The Gathering; and Colm Tóibín’s The Heather Blazing . In addition, the first and last parts of Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn take place in a beautifully evoked small Irish town.

  While it must be said that many Irish novelists tend to write bleak but beautiful fiction, there are lots of sunny tales about traveling around the country. One of my favorites is McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland by Pete McCarthy. What he’s trying to discover, in his own delightfully irreverent way, are all the bars that share his name. There’s also a similarly belly laugh-worthy sequel called The Road to McCarthy, which broadens the scope of his travels.

  Two other entertaining armchair travel books are Edward Enfield’s Freewheeling Through Ireland and Eric Newby’s Round Ireland in Low Gear, the account of a delightful and leisurely journey.

  Mysteries set in Ireland vary from contemporary to historical, from the mean streets of today to those during early medieval times. (Even if the streets of the latter weren’t paved, they were plenty mean.) Here are two mystery series I’ve enjoyed over the years, although I’ve discovered that you need to be in very different moods to enjoy them. The first is Ken Bruen’s g
ritty novels about Jack Taylor, all of which take place in Galway. The newest is Sanctuary; I don’t think you absolutely must begin with the first, as each one is pretty self-contained. Then there’s Peter Tremayne’s novels about Sister Fidelma, a seventh-century nun. A good one to start with is The Council of the Cursed, although the first one, for those committed to reading the series in order, is Absolution by Murder. (In his nonfiction-writing life, Tremayne is the noted Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis.)

  A very readable history of the country is How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill.

  IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

  Sometimes you can come up with what sounds like a brilliant idea for a trip, work out the details, buy the airline tickets or the equipment you need, set off with the highest of hopes, and then discover to your shock and dismay that—for reasons both large and small, both within your control and without it—maybe it wasn’t quite as brilliant an idea as you thought. Or sometimes, though the going gets tougher than you ever imagined, the gain is worth the pain: you change and grow and learn something important about yourself. Or not. See what you think when you read these books.

  Almost on the spur of the moment—mainly influenced by a paper placemat at an all-night IHOP in Providence, Rhode Island—Susan Jane Gilman and her friend Claire decide to spend the year after their 1986 graduation from Brown University traveling around the world.They’re going to rough it: there are to be no first-class hotels, no three-star meals, no English-speaking countries, no travel agent itineraries for them. Their journey will begin in China, which has just opened its borders to foreign visitors. Alas, as you’ll find in her honest and surprising memoir Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, nothing goes as planned.