Book Lust to Go Part 5

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 Pa.s.sage 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 this 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 Ha.s.san: 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 s.h.i.+raz.

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 Carre 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 cla.s.sic 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-ident.i.ty.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 t.i.tles, 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 Toibin's The Heather Blazing . In addition, the first and last parts of Toibin'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 gritty 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-cla.s.s 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.

Jim Malusa is a botanist whose specialty is the biogeography of the plants of southern Arizona, so you wouldn't necessarily pick him as the go-to guy to write about a series of bike trips.Yet, as he describes in Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellyb.u.t.ton of Six Continents, he spent parts of six consecutive years riding his trusty bicycle to the lowest spots of all six continents, overcoming everything from extreme weather to extreme insects, not to mention the possibility of land mines if he strayed off the road in Africa. It's clear that Malusa would be a fun guy to bike with-he has a knack for meeting interesting people, hearing some fascinating stories, and ending up in amazing places.

Tony Horwitz's Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia was written during the time he worked as a stringer in the Middle and Near East, while his wife, Geraldine, was working as Middle East correspondent based in Cairo for the Wall Street Journal. One of my favorite lines-pure Horwitz humor and insight-is this: "It is difficult to gaze in awe at the wonders of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt tugging so insistently at your sleeve."

W. Hodding Carter's Westward Whoa: In the Wake of Lewis and Clark and A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World are worth a read.

IT'S CHILE TODAY It's a bit surprising to me, but I couldn't find a lot of armchair reading devoted to Chile. The best travel account that I found was Sara Wheeler's Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile, and it's a real treat. As I discovered, Chile is approximately 2,600 miles long and is nowhere more than 250 miles wide (its average width is 110 miles).Wheeler makes her way (mostly by hitchhiking, walking, or taking a bus) from the arid north to the islanded south. Before reading this, I never really considered visiting Chile; now it's on my list of must-see places.

It's important to understand that-Wheeler aside-books on Chile are suffused with the political history of the place: it runs like a deep river beneath the plot or subject of a book. The terrible years of the Pinochet dictators.h.i.+p are sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, but they are always there for the author (and us) to conjure up.

Isabel Allende's memoir My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile and, of course, her novels, especially The House of the Spirits, offer a picture of Chile that's suffused with love (and a bit of magic).

Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives takes place in many more places than the author's native Chile; it provides a stunning portrait of Latin American life and literature.

Ariel Dorfman's works include Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey and Desert Memories: Journeys Through the Chilean North.

Antonio Skarmeta's novels The Postman (the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's postman relates his charming love story) and The Dancer and the Thief (set in contemporary Santiago) are not to be missed.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is not Chilean, of course, but rather Colombian. However, Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin is a totally satisfying work of journalism about Littin's return to Chile in disguise, determined to make a film about the Pinochet regime.

The short stories that make up Franciso Coloane's Tierra Del Fuego are filled with explorers and adventurers, all set against the background of southern Chile.

j.a.pANESE JOURNEYS.

j.a.pan is another one of those countries whose literature written during the middle and late twentieth century is either directly about World War II or the war is a strong subtext of the plot.

To begin, though, you simply must read The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki s.h.i.+kibu, a story of medieval j.a.pan that was written in the eleventh century.

Kazuo Is.h.i.+guro's An Artist of the Floating World, set in 1948, is the story of Masui Ono, a man who not only put his art to work for the Imperial Army, but also informed on his friends. Like all of Is.h.i.+guro's books, what isn't explicitly said is just as, or even more, important as the words on the page.

One of two n.o.bel laureates from j.a.pan is Yasunari Kawabata, who won the prize in 1968. (The other is 1994's winner, Kenzabur e.) I think one of Kawabata's best novels is The Old Capital, which tells the story of Chieko, the adopted daughter of a kimono designer from Kyoto, who must come to terms with the present when she learns the truth about her past. It's incandescently translated by J. Martin Holman.

The plots of Haruki Murakami's novels aren't easy to describe, but oh, I wish I could read them all over again for the first time. Although they don't give you a snapshot of j.a.pan as such, I think they still provide a sense of the country. If you're not particularly a fan of magical realism, Murakami's novels might not be your cup of tea, but do think about giving them a try. Start with A Wild Sheep Chase, then move on to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Sh.o.r.e.

I found the delicate and restrained style in Yoko Ogawa's novel The Housekeeper and the Professor to be not unlike a traditional j.a.panese painting. The same is true of his Hotel Iris: A Novel and The Divining Pool: Three Novellas.

Fiction about the country by non-j.a.panese writers that I enjoyed include Sara Backer's American Fuji; John Burnham Schwartz's The Commoner; Amelie Nothomb's comic gem of an autobiographical novel, Fear and Trembling; and David Peace's mystery set in the country right after the end of World War II, Tokyo Year Zero.

One nonfiction book I found interesting and instructive was Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at j.a.pan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura. The lessons he took away during what were not an easy twelve months carried over into his life long after the year was over.

There's perhaps no other country in which so many non-j.a.panese writers are eager to relate their experiences as foreigners, or gaijins, there.They are frequently, through not always, what I can only call ruefully humorous. (In fact, I am at this moment completely unable to think of a truly "funny" novel written by a native j.a.panese. Enlighten me, please, if you've read one.) The best gaijin accounts I've read include:Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in j.a.pan Dave Barry's Dave Barry Does j.a.pan Alan Booth's The Roads to Sata and its sequel, Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanis.h.i.+ng j.a.pan Peter Carey's Wrong About j.a.pan David Chadwick's Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in j.a.pan Cathy Davidson's thoughtful 36 Views of Mount Fiji: On Finding Myself in j.a.pan Josie Dew's A Ride in the Neon Sun Bruce Feiler's Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of j.a.pan Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto Will Ferguson's rollicking Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking j.a.pan David Mura's Turning j.a.panese Donald Keene's Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of j.a.pan (fascinating look at the life of a man who brought j.a.panese studies to the American cultural landscape) Leila Philip's memoir The Road Through Miyama, which tells of her apprentices.h.i.+p to a master potter in a small j.a.panese village Christopher Ross's Mis.h.i.+ma's Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend Kate T. Williamson's A Year in j.a.pan (an artist's journal) JORDAN.

There aren't a lot of armchair travel books devoted specifically to Jordan. In fact, aside from a few guidebooks, Jordan is usually lumped in with the rest of the Middle East-you'll find a chapter about it here and there in most books about that region. Or, as seen in the following recommendations, you can pretty easily find a book about the history and art of Jordan. I am, though, still looking for the perfect book that will tell me what the heart of the country is like. Until then, here's what I've discovered and enjoyed.

In Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, Queen Noor describes her life as both wife and, later, widow of King Hussein of Jordan. Much more than a trophy wife, the queen worked for peace in the Middle East and developed projects to aid the poverty-stricken citizens of her country.

Benjamin Orbach's Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East perhaps came closest to what I was looking for-it's entertaining and enlightening.

Married to a Bedouin by Marguerite van Geldermalsen is the true story of how a young New Zealand nurse met and married a man of the desert, settling down in the city of Petra.

Getty Publications brought out E. Borgia's Jordan: Past and Present: Petra, Jerash, Amman, a book that allows western readers to see the beauties of the country at three of its most well-known sites (although, to be honest, I'd heard of only two of them before I discovered this book).

Harry S.Abrams is another publisher specializing in art books. One in their Discoveries series is Christian Auge and Jean-Marie Dentzer's Petra: Lost City of the Ancient World; it's certainly useful for the contemporary traveler. While poring over these last two t.i.tles, I was remembering a line of a poem by John William Burgon that my mother used to quote about Petra: "a rose-red city, half as old as time."

JUST SO MUCH GREEK TO ME.

Although I have studiously stayed away from including guidebooks in Book l.u.s.t To Go, I couldn't resist recommending Philip Matyszak's Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day, a charming amalgamation of contemporary guide, history, art, and literature-an unbeatable recipe for reading entertainment and information (not to mention an enjoyable trip). And-should your journey take you further afield-don't forget to check out Matyszak's Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day.

I think I can guarantee that you'll enjoy Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece and Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Together, they are two of the best pure armchair travel books about Greece ever written. Long out of print, they were-I'm thrilled to say-recently reissued by New York Review Books Cla.s.sics. Not only is Fermor one of the best travel companions you'll ever encounter, he is also able to bring to life the places he goes and the people he meets. He's one of those writers whose frequent digressions from his stated topic only improve the books.

A good novel set in Greece is Alcestis by Katharine Beutner. For those of you who aren't up on your Greek mythology, Alcestis is the woman who sacrificed herself to Hermes in the place of her beloved husband.

It was so obvious to me that Zachary Mason had a terrific time creating The Lost Books of the Odyssey (that is, beyond the hard work of the actual writing), and you'll have a ball reading these reimaginings of the story of Odysseus. Mason's a brilliant writer; these are witty, serious, and sad-and sometimes all three at the same time.

Other excellent choices include Sara Wheeler's nonfiction account of her travels, Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island (originally published under the t.i.tle An Island Apart: Travels in Evia);Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, a memoir by Sofka Zinovieff; Dinner with Persephone:Travels in Greece by Patricia Storace; An Island in Greece: On the Sh.o.r.e of Skopelos by Michael Carroll; and The Summer of My Greek Taverna: A Memoir by Tom Stone.

Anne Zouroudi's The Messenger of Athens is the first in a series of mysteries; each is based on one of the seven deadly sins. The detective, Hermes Diaktoros, arrives on the island of Thiminos and tells the shady chief of police that he's been sent from "a higher authority" in Athens. There's much pleasure for mystery fans to be found here.

Mystery fans should also make a determined effort to find a copy of When in Greece by Emma Lathen; it's one of the author's best in her series featuring banker and unwilling detective John Putnam Thatcher.

KENYA.

The nonfiction about Kenya is practically endless (especially memoirs); probably the best known is Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa. When you've finished that, try these.

From its inviting (and very funny) first paragraph to its last heartbreaking chapter, A Primate's Memoir by neuroscientist (and winner of a McArthur "genius grant") Robert Sapolsky could hardly be better reading. Sapolsky spent many years in Kenya with a tribe of baboons; what makes this book so special is how he brings the troop to life (not least by giving them all biblical names). Sapolsky widens the book's scope considerably by describing his trips around the continent and weaves in discussions of the role of game parks in Africa, the whole issue of poaching, and the corruption seemingly endemic to African bureaucracy. There's also a rather wonderful description of gorilla researcher Dian Fossey's memorial service.

Maasai Days by Cheryl Bentsen was one of the American Library a.s.sociation's Notable Books when it was published in 1989.

The Bolter by Frances...o...b..rne is the story of her scandalous-by early twentieth-century standards, at least-great-grandmother, Lady Idina Sackville, who left her husband behind in order to live in her beloved Africa following World War I.

Among the novels set in Kenya, here are my favorites: The saga Green City in the Sun by Barbara Wood; Bartle Bull's The White Rhino Hotel; the quiet love story and most charming A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson (which fans of Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe books might well enjoy); John le Carre's sorrowful The Constant Gardener (much of it takes place in Kenya); The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton; Nowhere in Africa by Stefanie Zweig, about a family that left Hitler's Germany for a new life in Africa (the book was made into a film); and Anita Shreve's A Change in Alt.i.tude.

For a Kenyan-born author's story, try Ngug wa Thiong'o's Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir.

KIWIS FOREVER!: NEW ZEALAND IN PRINT.

One of the best speaking gigs I've ever had was to give four talks on a Holland America cruise from Auckland, New Zealand, to Sydney, Australia. We went down the east coast of New Zealand, stopping for the day in cities large and small. (Naturally, I have pictures of many of the libraries we went into.) One of my programs was an American's view of the best reading from New Zealand and Australia. In the process of preparing for the trip, I discovered that New Zealand has a very rich literary history that many people-even the most devoted readers, like me-are unfamiliar with.

If you stopped someone browsing the fiction section of the library or bookstore and asked them to name a Kiwi writer (after first explaining, if need be, what country the nickname refers to), the chances are, if they know of one writer, that writer is most likely going to be Keri Hulme, whose The Bone People was a winner of the (then) Booker Prize in 1985. It's one of those books that you either love or hate. It's definitely not an easy book to read, but if you have the inclination and patience, I found it to be a rewarding novel.

Native New Zealander Janet Frame is best known for her three-volume autobiography (and the film made from the second book), consisting of To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City, but if that's all you've read, try her novel Towards Another Summer. It was published after her death and is filled with a yearning to be home, wherever that may be.Another good novel of hers is Living in the Maniototo, which is more lighthearted than some of her other writing. Prizes: The Selected Stories of Janet Frame showcases her talents as a short story writer. (I've found the stories are best read slowly, in between other books, and not at one go as if it were a novel.) Speaking of short stories by New Zealand writers, don't neglect reading Katherine Mansfield's, especially "The Garden Party." It's brilliant.

Other contemporary Kiwi books and writers include Maurice Gee (don't miss his trilogy that begins with Plumb, as well as the award-winning Blindsight); Patricia Grace, a Maori writer whose books are both beautifully written and very depressing-you might try her Montana New Zealand Book Awards-winning novel, Tu; Nigel c.o.x's Tarzan Presley, which takes two universal icons and melds them together (it's very hard to find, but worth the search), or The Cowboy Dog (a coming-of-age tale); Maurice Shadbolt's Season of the Jew (excellent historical fiction, set in the nineteenth century and based on the life of Te Kooti, a Maori; Rachael King's first novel, The Sound of b.u.t.terflies; Damien Wilkins's The Fainter (and others); and Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance by Lloyd Jones, set in (very) rural New Zealand at the end of World War I, and then, in the present, in Wellington. If you're familiar with this New Zealander's work, it's probably due to the popularity (well earned) of the multi-award-winning Mister Pip, which takes place on an unnamed island in the South Seas.

Christina Thompson's memoir Come On Sh.o.r.e and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story weaves her personal experiences (falling in love with and marrying a Maori) with a general overview of the culture clash between westerners and the native Maori tribes.

KOREA-NORTH AND SOUTH I can't quite believe that many of us are going to head off for a vacation in North Korea any time soon. But who knows? Just in case, here are some books you'll want to read.

Chances are that James Church's atmospheric (rather than fast-moving) novel A Corpse in the Koryo is the closest you'll get to North Korea. (After reading it, you'll probably count yourself lucky that it is!) This is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Inspector O of the Pyongyang Police Department. The pseudonymous author spent many years as an intelligence officer in the Far East and clearly knows pretty much all there is to know about North Korean society. Inspector O is smart, pragmatic, and a bit of a romantic-much like Lew Archer, in the Ross MacDonald mysteries, or Arkady Renko, in Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park and sequels. Church uses details, both small and large (from broken cameras and stolen teakettles to the all-pervasive atmosphere of fear, deprivation, graft, and mistrust that pervades the lives of North Koreans) to make the setting palpably real.

Seoul and surrounding environs in the 1970s is the setting for a series of mysteries by Martin Limon. Military Police Sergeant George Sueno, who, along with his partner Ernie Bascom, normally investigates crimes involving black marketing, drugs, and prost.i.tution among the American troops, narrates them. In their sixth outing, G. I. Bones, the crime is a cold case that occurred right after the Korean War ended-twenty years before-and its solution opens windows on Sueno's past that he thought he'd closed forever. Limon offers a clear view into a time and a place that's unfamiliar to many of us. If you like this mystery, try my other favorite: The Wandering Ghost.

Another terrific mystery-this one set primarily in North Korea-is Gus Lee's oldie but goodie, Tiger's Tail.

If you were to pick a locale in which to set a novel, I don't think you could find anyplace more remarkable than the setting of Jeff Talarigo's The Ginseng Hunter. It takes place along the Tumen River, which divides China from Korea. The themes-love, war, political oppression, the grief of solitude, the solitude of grief-all make this an unforgettable reading experience.

In Korea, A Walk Through the Land of Miracles, Simon Winchester provides probably the friendliest guide to South Korea, describing, with his usual panache, its history, geography, and culture.

The best book for the nonhistorian on the Korean War (which was not, in actuality, ever declared a war, but rather described as a "police action") is David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. It's long, thorough, not tedious, and filled with fascinating and little-known facts.

The sections of Chang-rae Lee's brilliant fourth novel The Surrendered that are set in Korea (and Manchuria) during the "police action" make excruciating reading. I can't imagine the pain it must have caused Lee to write them. But oh my goodness, what a splendid novel this is.

In a first novel based on the life of her mother, Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter tells a tale of a country and a woman trying to balance the old ways with the new.

All the stories in Once the Sh.o.r.e by Paul Yoon are set on a South Korean island; their time frame covers the half-century between just before the Korean War to the present.

The stories of men and women who managed to leave the country form the basis of Barbara Demick's consistently interesting Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. One of the first things you'll want to do, I suspect, is mull over how ironic the t.i.tle is.

LAOS.

Although there are many books on Indochina or Southeast Asia that include Laos, here are some that focus on the country itself.

Mystery fans rejoice-don't miss these little-known treasures: Colin Cotterill's series starring Dr. Siri Paiboun, coroner to the nation. I'd read these in order: The Coroner's Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, Disco for the Departed, Anarchy and Old Dogs, Curse of the Pogo Stick, The Merry Misogynist, and Love Songs from a Shallow Grave.

In Lost Over Laos: A True Story of Tragedy, Mystery, and Friends.h.i.+p, Richard Pyle describes a search for the remains of four combat journalists who were killed in 1971, as the Vietnam War was raging. Horst Faas's photographs complement the tale.

Kao Kalia Yang's affecting memoir, The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, remained with me long after I turned over the last page.

LAS VEGAS.

For many people (members of my own family among them), Las Vegas is a vacation spot of choice. When it came time to write this section I decided, for some reason that makes total sense to me-maybe because Las Vegas seems to change radically moment by moment and certainly year-by-year-to arrange the recommended t.i.tles roughly in order of publication date.

John D. MacDonald is best known for his Travis McGee mysteries (all set in or near Fort Lauderdale, Florida), but his non-series novel The Only Girl in the Game is like a snapshot of Las Vegas circa 1960; it's so well plotted and the portrait of Las Vegas is so well drawn that reading it is like taking a trip back in time.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson is a drug-hazy account of adventures in the city that first appeared in Rolling Stone in 1971, and set the tone for the stoned decade to come.

Although I'm generally not a true crime fan,I did quite enjoy these two books: James McMa.n.u.s's Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker and Nicholas Pileggi's Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas, an account of the two men who ran the Mob (and therefore ran Las Vegas) in the 1980s. In addition to being both enlightening and nicely written, Pileggi's book is a good companion read for McDonald's novel.

In Beautiful Children Charles Bock, a native of the city, portrays the dark underside of Las Vegas through the experiences of a twelve-year-old boy who leaves his home in the suburbs and disappears into the maw of glitter and grief of Sin City. And the sins are major, though not those that you might first expect.

And fans of Carl Hiaa.s.sen's and Donald Westlake's capers will enjoy Chris Ewan's novels that take place in different cities around the world-The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas is the third in the series, but there's no need to read them in any particular order. Charlie Howard, the eponymous hero, also appears in The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and The Good Thief's Guide to Paris.

LEAVENED IN LEBANON.

If Lebanon's your destination, don't miss these. Waltz with Bas.h.i.+r: A Lebanon War Story is a graphic novel based on the film of the same name, written and drawn by Ari Folman and David Polonsky. It's about the experiences of an Israeli soldier during the 1982 attacks on Shatila and Sabra.

Novels either set in Lebanon or by Lebanese writers include Beaufort by Ron Leshem (about an Israeli based in southern Lebanon whose commando team is undergoing constant attack by Hezbollah); Nathalie Abi-Ezzi's A Girl Made of Dust, set in a small town just outside Beirut; Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game; and The Hakawati, in which Rabih Alameddine weaves the whole history of the Middle East into the story of one unforgettable Lebanese family (this is not a book to rush through-you have to take the time to savor what Alameddine has accomplished). If you appreciate Alameddine's style and substance, you might also enjoy his novels Koolaids: The Art of War and I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters.

All of Hanan al-Shaykh's novels deal with the role of women in the Middle East, particularly in her native Lebanon. Her best known is probably Women of Sand and Myrrh, so I'd start there; I can also highly recommend her epistolary novel, Beirut Blues.