Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria

Almost French: A New Life In Paris

Sarah Turnbull · 320 pages

A delightful, fresh twist on the travel memoir, Almost French takes us on a tour that is fraught with culture clashes but rife with deadpan humor. Sarah Turnbull's stint in Paris was only supposed to last a week. Chance had brought Sarah and Frederic together in Bucharest, and on impulse she decides to take him up on his offer to visit him in the world's most romantic city. Sacrificing Vegemite f

Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan

Bruce Feiler · 321 pages

Learning to Bow has been heralded as one of the funniest, liveliest, and most insightful books ever written about the clash of cultures between America and Japan. With warmth and candor, Bruce Feiler recounts the year he spent as a teacher in a small rural town. Beginning with a ritual outdoor bath and culminating in an all-night trek to the top of Mt. Fuji, Feiler teaches his students about Ameri

Around India in 80 Trains

Monisha Rajesh · 264 pages

In 1991 Monisha and her family uprooted from Sheffield to Madras in the hope of making India their home again. But fed up with soap-eating rats, severed human heads, paying bribes, and the creepy colonel across the road, they soon returned to England, determined never to go back again. But twenty years later, Monisha takes a page out of Jules Verne's classic tale, turns to a map of the Indian rail

Paris to the Moon

Adam Gopnik · 342 pages

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafes, breathtaking facades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans. In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light.

Italian Neighbors

Tim Parks · 284 pages

The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca

Tahir Shah · 362 pages

An African in Greenland

Tete-Michel Kpomassie · 432 pages

An Area of Darkness

V.S. Naipaul · 281 pages

This is V.S. Naipaul's record of his sojourn to India, the land of his fathers. Throughout the book, Naipaul's intense perceptions sweep the reader into the turmoil and fabulous richness of the length and breadth of India.

For Fukui's Sake: Two Years In Rural Japan

Sam Baldwin · 210 pages

Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

Andrew X. Pham · 344 pages

"Catfish and Mandala is the poignant, lyrical tale of an American odyssey - a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam - made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland. Intertwined with an often humorous travelogue spanning a year of discovery is a memoir of war, escape, and, ultimately, family secrets."--BOOK JACKET. "Ther

Dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece

Patricia Storace · 398 pages

"I lived in Athens, at the intersection of a prostitute and a saint." So begins this astonishing memoir of fantastical peregrinations throughout Greece. Dinner with Persephone is an indelible masterwork about a place and a people whose culture has influenced us all. With great smartness of style, winning detail, and infectious humor, acclaimed poet and essayist Patricia Storace magically conjures

I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany

Mark Greenside · 244 pages

Author and teacher Mark Greenside recounts his struggles to fit into the life of a small Celtic village in Brittany.

Notes from a Small Island

Bill Bryson · 324 pages

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al. back to the States for a while. But before leaving his much-loved Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around old Blighty, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had for so long been his home. The resulting book was a eulogy to the country that produced M

Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

Jamie Zeppa · 320 pages

In this memoir, a young Canadian woman decides to take her first trip outside of North America before she is to be married. After accepting a teaching post in Bhutan, a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas bordering China and India, she eventually breaks off her engagement and falls in love with another man.

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran

Hooman Majd · 252 pages

We have an idea of the texture of life in Paris or Rome, but what is the texture of life like in Tehran? How do you get a driving licence? Or secure an account with a discreet and reputable liquor dealer? This title introduces us to the daily delights and challenges of life in the so-called axis of evil.

A Year in Provence

Peter Mayle · 207 pages

In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glo

Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion

Michael Levy · 242 pages

An irreverent account of the author's experiences as a Jewish-American Peace Corps volunteer serving in rural China describes his observations about the lives of China's interior populations and their complex relationships with local traditions and the rapid changes of modernization.

Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World

Rita Golden Gelman · 320 pages

The true story of an ordinary woman living an extraordinary existence all over the world. “Gelman doesn’t just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the people’s lives. This is an amazing travelogue.” —Booklist At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita Golden Gelman left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of trav

Duende: A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco

Jason Webster · 336 pages

"Destined for a sedate and predictable life in academia, Jason Webster was derailed in his early twenties when his first love, an aloof Florentine beauty, dumped him unceremoniously. Loveless and eager for adventure and determined to fulfill a secret dream -- he left Oxford and headed for Spain, the country that had long captivated his imagination, and set off in search of duende, the intense and

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea · 346 pages

Autobiographical account of two year's spent in a village of southern Iraq. The author accompanied her husband, who was doing anthropological research in the area.

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

Saidiya V. Hartman · 288 pages

"In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, Hartman reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African-American history. The slave, Ha

Iron and Silk

Mark Salzman · 211 pages

An American describes his experiences after his arrival in Hunan Province in 1982 to teach English, including wushu training and life in post-Mao China.

The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland

Saira Shah · 262 pages

My Life in France

Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun