Across the World / Multi-region
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The White Mosque—A Silk Road Memoir: Sofia Samatar
Published by Catapult / C Hurst and Co Publishers, 2022, 336 pages “I’m haunted by a little piece of history, the story of a small, hardy, stubborn group of people who travelled here more than a hundred years ago.” In… Continue reading
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Following Nellie Bly—Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World: Rosemary J. Brown
Published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2021, 184 pages “I want to go around [the world] in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg’s record. May I try it?” The idea came from Nellie Bly,… Continue reading
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Elsewhere—One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel: Rosita Boland
Published by Doubleday, 2018, 272 pages Rosita Boland has a bad case of fernweh, an ache for distant places, a wanderlust which has her leaving her native Ireland to discover the world. “My friend Róisín once asked me why I loved… Continue reading
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Zaatar Days, Henna Nights—Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East: Maliha Masood
Published by Hachette, 2007, 320 pages “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” This quote from a poem by Mary Oliver obviously touched a chord with Maliha Masood, since she used it at the beginning of her… Continue reading
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The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy—Wacky Encounters in Exotic Lands: Sudha Mahalingam
Published by Penguin India, 2019, 272 pages “How did I turn into that unwonted specimen—a middle-aged, middle-class mother of two from a conservative…background traveling solo, long before solo travel became fashionable among Indian women?” Sudha Mahalingam loves to travel but… Continue reading
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Black Woman Walking—A Different Experience of World Travel: Maureen Stone
Published by Gazelle Drake Publishing, 2002, 408 pages Black Woman Walking is a wide-ranging book—Maureen Stone is not just a hiker but also a sociologist. She travels widely and walks everywhere she possibly can, in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and… Continue reading
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How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt—A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer: Mick Conefrey
Published by ONEWorld Publications, 2011, 224 pages “Take every precaution and abandon all fear.” Mary Hall, c. 1905 Why is it, when asked to imagine an explorer, people inevitably think of a sunburned unshaven white man squinting into the sun?… Continue reading
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Around the World in 80 Trains—A 45,000 Mile Adventure: Monisha Rajesh
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 336 pages “Trains are rolling libraries of information, and all it takes is to reach out to passengers to bind together their tales.” Monisha Rajesh loves trains (in fact she wrote a similar book about riding… Continue reading
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Flâneuse—Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London: Lauren Elkin
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017, 336 pages Flâneur is a French word that means “one who wanders aimlessly”. It always refers to a man with time and money, who walks the streets of a city. Elkin appropriates the concept… Continue reading
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The Shooting Star—A Girl, Her Backpack and the World: Shivya Nath
Published by Penguin, 2018, 201 pages The Shooting Star starts with Shivya Nath deep in the Amazon rainforest (around the border between Ecuador and Peru), taking part in a shamanic cleansing ritual that involves drinking ayahuasca, an Amazonian plant that is… Continue reading
Women's Travel Books 