Asia
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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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Winter Pasture—One Woman’s Journey with China’s Kazakh Herders: Li Juan
Translated from Chinese by Jack Hargreaves and Yan YanPublished by Astra House, 2021, 320 pages Kazakh herders in China have been practicing their way of life for centuries. With their cattle, camels, sheep, and horses, they move from pasture to… 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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Shadow City—A Woman Walks Kabul: Taran N. Khan
Published by Penguin, 2019, 304 pages “The stories we tell are often crafted from imperfect memory, drawing on what we remember, forgetting the rest. This is also true of cities, where what we see is only that which is recalled,… 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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Two Trees Make a Forest—In Search of My Family’s Past Among Taiwan’s Mountains and Coasts: Jessica J. Lee
Published by Catapult, 2020, 284 pages “I saw in Taiwan something of the ways that places draw us in—and sometimes push us away again—and there grew in me an inarticulate longing.” This is a lyrical book about home, language, the… Continue reading
Women's Travel Books 