Writers are readers
Famous authors reflect on the books they have found most transporting
This summer, instead of squeezing one more book into our suitcases, we’ll need what we read to transport us to faraway places: to beaches or villas or anywhere but here.
For inspiration, we asked authors who have written particularly transporting novels which books they like best when they need to get away.
MARY KAY ANDREWS,
author of Hello, Summer, The High Tide Club and others
Living and working in the sultry American South, where all my novels are set, this time of year I’m especially drawn to author Kate Morton’s atmosphere-drenched books, which hearken me back to the gothic novels of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt. I especially liked Morton’s The Lake House, which features an abandoned, crumbling mansion in the Cornwall countryside and the long unsolved disappearance of the beloved toddler son of an aristocratic family during a Midsummer’s Eve party in 1933.
PIERCE BROWN,
author of the Red Rising series
Something Wicked This Way Comes. Forget about being transported to far-off lands and fall into the topsy-turvy midnight world that inspired The Night Circus and legions of young dreamers. When a summer storm brings an arcane circus to a Midwestern town, two lads are torn from their humdrum ennui into a fantastical realm of bearded ladies, malevolent carnies and the infamous Illustrated Man. Ray Bradbury might not take you to Mars (this time), but he’ll drag you smiling and screaming back to the wonders and terrors of childhood.
DIANA GABALDON,
author of the Outlander series
If I had to pick just one, I think it would be Shogun, by James Clavell. That one gripped me for a solid three days of reading and completely took me from my own reality into his.
LINDA HOLMES,
author of Evvie Drake Starts Over
One of the many reasons I love Andy Weir’s The Martian is that it makes Mars, and a very few small enclosed spaces on Mars, so available to the imagination. It’s easy for space to feel vast and filled with possibility; the book makes living on Mars a matter of plastic and tape, buckets and rows of growing plants. I’m always surprised when I remind myself that it’s a description of living on another planet entirely.
KHALED HOSSEINI,
author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters. Post-world War I London. An impossible, life-altering love affair. A murder. Twists aplenty. And gorgeous writing to boot.
MIN JIN LEE,
author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko
I tend to work to avoid the difficulties of life. So books are my tonic from too much work and too much life. I can’t think of a lovelier book than Italo Calvino’s beautiful novel The Baron in the Trees to carry me away to the Ligurian Riviera. I admire Cosimo, the young baron, who decides to leave all and find an alternate life in the trees. In such times, his choices seem perfectly sensible.
FRANCES MAYES,
author Under the Tuscan Sun, See You in the Piazza and others
Read and reread, that’s my motto for this surreal zone we’re inhabiting. When I’m longing to pack my bag and go, I turn to the incomparable Patrick Leigh Fermor — everything he wrote, but especially Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, a book that once caused me to travel to that spare and essential region. Another transporter: intrepid Freya Stark, lover of the classical world and early explorer of the Middle East. I especially love The Valleys of the Assassins and Alexander’s Path.
SALMAN RUSHDIE,
author of Quichotte and others
Fourteen years ago, Bill Buford published the brilliant Heat, an account of his adventures and misadventures, from Greenwich Village to Tuscany, in his quest to become an Italian chef. Now he has surpassed that masterpiece with Dirt, in which he moves to Lyon, the capital of French cuisine, and takes us on an even richer journey, by turns hilarious, obsessional, informative and borderline deranged, as he seeks to earn his toque. Deeply enjoyable.
V.E. SCHWAB,
author of the Shades of Magic series and the forthcoming The Invisible Life of Addie Larue
When it comes to escapism, you don’t always have to go to another world — sometimes space is far enough. I’ve long been a fan of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series, set in a futuristic expanse, a rich tapestry of planets and people. The second book especially, A Closed and Common Orbit, is the perfect mix of incredible characters and interstellar adventure.