In a past column, I wrote about the doorways into reading, one of which is setting. Some people read for a specific setting - such as any book that takes place in Ireland - whereas others look for books with vivid descriptions of places that make you wish you were there. And then there are fictional or fantasy settings of places that only exist in your imagination. Well-written settings can take you on an imagination vacation, even if a real-life road trip is not in your immediate future. Let’s take a whirlwind world tour, with a list of novels, books, and memoirs where the setting is integral to the story:
Europe
- A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (1990)
- Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes (1996)sha
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2001)the
India
- The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay (2019)
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (2008)
- Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (2007)
Far East
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997)
- Shogun by James Clavell (orig. 1975)
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)
Africa
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (orig. 1959)
- Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah (2020)
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
Australia
- True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)
- The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland (2019)
- The Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood
South America
- The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley (2017)
- Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge by John Gimlette (2011)
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (orig. 1967)
