Around the world in books
Everyone knows that when you read, you're transported to somewhere else. So if you feel as though January has lasted for far too long, and you want some exotic escapism without actually having to spend too much money or exert too much effort, here are some
1. Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne, 1873)
One ill-fated evening at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg rashly bets his companions £20,000 that he can travel around the entire globe in just eighty days. And he is determined not to lose.
2. Afghanistan: A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini, 2007)
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate.
3. Australia: The Bat (Jo Nesbø, 1997)
Harry Hole, a Norwegian wash-up detective whose gift for solving true-crime just won't go away, is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl who was working in a bar.
4. Egypt: Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie, 1937)
When a rich heiress, Linnett Rigeway, is murdered on a cruise boat on the Nile following her wedding to Simon Doyle, it is left to Poirot to pick his way through bitter rivalries, dirty schemes, and mysterious thefts to find the true murderer before more people are killed.
5. France: Total Chaos (Jean-Claude Izzo, 1995)
Caught between pride and crime, racism and fraternity, tragedy and light, messy urbanization and generous beauty, Marseilles for detective Fabio Montale is a Utopia, an ultimate port of call for exiles.
6. India: The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy, 1997)
In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.
7. Ireland: Ulysses (James Joyce, 1920)
Reimagining The Odyssey as the travels and trials of an everyday man in Dublin, Joyce weaves strikingly versatile prose styles and varying perspectives to encompass the whole of life within the hours of a single standard day, June 16th, 1904.
8. Lebanon: An Unsafe Haven (Nada Awar Jarrar, 2016)
This is a universal story of people whose lives are tested and transformed, as they wrestle with the anguish of war, displacement and loss, but also with the vital need for hope.
9. Sweden: The Ice Beneath Her (Camilla Grebe, 2016)
As winter descends on Stockholm, police officers Peter Lindgren and Manfred Olsson are investigating the murder of an unidentified young woman found decapitated in the house of Jesper Orre, the controversial, charismatic, and currently missing CEO of Clothes & More.
10. United Kingdom: The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (Joanna Cannon, 2015)
It's the summer of 1976 and, in the cul-de-sac where this beautiful story in set, the heat wave is being blamed for everything. Including the disappearance of Mrs Creasy.
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