7 books for travelling before, during and after a trip

A good travel book does more than choose your next destination. It teaches you to notice a street, question your own perspective and accept that travel includes fatigue, boredom and confusion. This list mixes essays, reportage, memoir and fiction. It fits in a suitcase, but it is not a guidebook.

The Art of Travel — Alain de Botton

Starting with airports, hotels, landscapes and anticipation, de Botton asks why we travel. It is for anyone who has noticed that changing countries does not switch off our worries. Its lasting subject is attention: what we see depends on how we look.

A Walk in the Woods — Bill Bryson

Bryson's attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail combines personal narrative, humour and the history of the region. There is effort, lack of preparation and the discovery that nature need not make life easy to be impressive.

!A person reading beside a window while travelling

The Great Railway Bazaar — Paul Theroux

Published in 1975, it follows a long train journey from Europe through Asia and back via Russia. Theroux watches passengers, carriages and conversations as closely as destinations. It is also a document of its era and rewards a critical reading of the narrator's generalisations.

In Patagonia — Bruce Chatwin

Chatwin builds Patagonia from fragments: family stories, eccentric characters, landscapes and tales poised between investigation and legend. It is no manual to the region, but an example of how a place can be told without a straight line.

Child of the Dark — Carolina Maria de Jesus

Not every book that transforms how we see a place sits on the travel shelf. Carolina's diary records life in the Canindé favela in São Paulo in the late 1950s. It reminds travellers that cities are not just attractions and central districts; they are lives an itinerary often leaves outside the frame.

O Turista Aprendiz — Mário de Andrade

Mário de Andrade's accounts of travelling through Brazil's North and Northeast bring together notes, impressions and photographs. Its title translates as “The Apprentice Tourist”, a useful attitude anywhere: in another culture we are learners, not instant experts. English-language availability may vary.

!An open notebook beside a camera and map

The Invention of Morel — Adolfo Bioy Casares

In this Argentine novella, a fugitive reaches an apparently deserted island before mysterious visitors appear. Short and unsettling, it is ideal for readers who enjoy literary islands. Travel here means entering a place whose rules must be discovered.

Choosing a book for your next trip

Look beyond stories set at your destination. Try one local voice, one work of history or reportage, and something you would read for pleasure anywhere. Leave room to buy a book along the way. Sometimes the best travel read is the one you do not yet know exists.

Sources: Penguin Random House — The Art of Travel and Penguin Random House — A Walk in the Woods.