I Saw Ramallah

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

Mourid Barghouti · 216 pages

In 2000 Mourid Barghouti published I Saw Ramallah, the acclaimed memoir that told of returning in 1996 to his Palestinian home for the first time since exile following the Six-Day War in 1967. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here takes up the story in 1998 when Barghouti returned to the Occupied Territories to introduce his Cairo-born son, Tamim, to his Palestinian family. Ironically, a few years lat

Journal of an Ordinary Grief

Mahmoud Darwish · 177 pages

"First published in Beirut in 1973, these probing essays ask vital questions about the existentially complex realities the Palestinians in Israel face and the ambiguity of Darwish's own identity as an Israeli Palestian."--Title page verso.

Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen · 389 pages

The author relates her experience in Kenya, describing not only her own youth but also the country's traditions and people.

Palestine

Joe Sacco · 285 pages

"In late 1991 and early 1992, Joe Sacco spent two months with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, traveling and taking notes. Upon returning to the United States in mid-1992, he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combined the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling to explore this complex, emotionally weighty situation.". "The nine-issue com

In the Presence of Absence

Mahmoud Darwish, mHmwd drwysh · 200 pages

"Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. In stunning language, Darwish's self-eelgy inhabits a rare space where opposites bleed and blend into each other. Prose and poetry, life and death,

West with the Night

Beryl Markham · 293 pages

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.

Notes from My Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador

Angelina Jolie, Caspian Tredwell-Owen · 243 pages

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir

Kao Kalia Yang · 294 pages

In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to

A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure

Marlena de Blasi · 346 pages

American chef Marlena de Blasi and her Venetian husband, Fernando, married rather late in life. In search of the rhythms of country living, the couple moves to a barely renovated former stable in Tuscany with no phone, no central heating, and something resembling a playhouse kitchen. They dwell among two hundred villagers, ancient olive groves, and hot Etruscan springs. In this patch of earth wher

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession

Edmund de Waal · 416 pages

"An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted"--

All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes

Maya Angelou · 240 pages

North to the Orient

Anne Morrow Lindbergh · 248 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

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

David Grann · 339 pages

A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker wr

The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese

Michael Paterniti · 349 pages

In the picturesque village of Guzma n, Spain, in a cave on the edge of town, there is a cramped limestone chamber known as "the telling room." This is where villagers have gathered for centuries to share their stories and secrets--usually accompanied by copious amounts of wine. It was here, in the summer of 2000, that Michael Paterniti found himself listening to a Spanish cheesemaker as he spun an

Istanbul: Memories and the City

Orhan Pamuk · 384 pages

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share. With cinematic fluidit

A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

Frances Mayes · 420 pages

The author who captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany expands her horizons to immerse herself--and her readers--in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places. This book is a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. She rents houses among ordinar

Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape

Raja Shehadeh · 211 pages

"Provides a rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine"--Jimmy Carter (from cover).

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

Lawrence Durrell · 287 pages

Carnet de Voyage

Craig Thompson · 224 pages

Presents the illustrated journal of graphic novelist Craig Thompson in which he describes his travels in France, Barcelona, the Alps, and Morocco where he spent three months researching a book.

Time of White Horses

Ibrahim Nasrallah - ibrhym nSr llh · 643 pages

Set in Palestine, before the creation of the state of Israel, this lyrical and deftly written novel spans three generations living in the small village of Hadiya. Reaching back into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the immense history of this period is brought into focus by the very human stories of Hajj Mahmoud, his son Khaled, and grandson Naji. As the cruel hand of history hov

Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

Kent Nerburn · 313 pages

A Native American elder travels through Indian towns, introducing readers to a vivid cast of characters.

The Road to Mecca

Muhammad Asad · 380 pages

This autobiographical work by one of Europe's best known convert to Islam gives us a rounded portrait of a man in search of adventure and truth. It is part spiritual autobiography, part summary of the author's intuitive insights into Islam and the Arabs, part an impressive travelogue. Punctuated with abundant adventure, moments of contemplation, colorful narrative, brilliant description and lively

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